Some War Stories from the Long war
by AB Norway
Summary: A follow-up to my main story "The Long War", about secondary events, other theaters, after the end of the conflict itself... Hope that it might be of interest to some at least!
1. The Art of Skirmishing

**_The Art of Skirmishing – by a Practitioner_**

* * *

**Prologue  
**My name is U'ok, I was a member of the Big Cliff clan, an edge-of-the-forest clan nortwest of the Tipani clan, not far from the coastline, when it all began. I can clearly remember that day the 6th Toruk Makto landed by the home tree, bringing a Tipani man who had lost his foot in the Great Battle. He held a speech: "Big Cliff clan! I am Jakesully, the 6th Toruk Makto and the olo'eyktan of the Omatikaya! We of the Omatikaya clan will one day need assistance from the Big Cliff clan, we and the Tipani and some other clans too have driven the Sky people away from our world but they are likely to one day return to wreak even more havoc among us. I hereby invite your olo'eyktan Pafa to our discussion circle, so we can plan what to do to throw them out when they do return!"

Pafa accepted the invitation, when he came back he looked rudely shocked. "Males and females of our clan, I have seen some utterly horrible, reprehensible, awful destruction! Those (abusive word omitted) just crushed a tree of voices and they had intended to flatten the Tree of Souls too… Yes I have seen the wrecks of the sky ay'ikran that had been ordered to do it – if they had succeeded, then… I have seen what was left of the Old Home Tree of Omatikaya… I have seen how the pit where they had been digging for a long time looked like… And what they told me... cutting off the queue of an olo'eyktan just for the fun of it… shooting warriors with incendiary stuff to not kill until warriors had been horribly burned… ravaging hunting grounds and other livelihoods of whole clans in a sweep… And knowing that if they come back here in force, the same will come to happen again, very probably to us too... We ought to, we must, we have to cooperate with the Omatikaya to avoid such a disaster once again! Anyone who don't believe what I am now saying should take a trip to Omatikaya and have a look for him or herself!" Tears were in his eyes, he had obviously had a brutal experience. The Big Cliff clan joined the Namana Land Federation against very few protests. Clanspeople understood that Pafa had understood something important.

A time of great reforms began but Pafa agreed with all of them, the shock from what he had seen and heard and then could retell clobbered any protest. His daughter Mnisakx and her mate Mayta'tey were given titles as srung tsahik and srung olo'eyktan, and invited to a school to learn about advanced politics, ceremony and diplomacy. Leading hunters, scouts, healers, priestesses etc. and numerous other leading craftspeople were invited to other schools to learn higher leadership of their crafts, and I myself was appointed to attend a warrior school to take leadership of our clan's kumpongu (warrior party) next to the olo'eyktan. Ang'at was appointed to represent our clan at the just established Northwestern Coastal tribe, and the constituting assembly appointed our leading cook Zemu'by as tribal leader of cooking. An honour for us, our cooks have always been proud of their superb mastery of the culinary art!

At the Warrior school of the tribe I learned a lot I never before knew.

We learned tactics – We met with big walking machines, now motionless, and learned how to defeat them – from above I was told, if we didn't have any Sky People arms. We met a big flying machine, again standing still on the ground, and learned how to defeat that one too - an ikran flyer should attack it from above and behind, and they were vulnerable on or close to the ground. Walking tawtute warriors – never attack them straight at front, rather from the flanks, above or rear, sneak up on them in the deep forest and take them one by one, try to arrange ambushes in tight localities where they had trouble with walking around – cliffs, bogs, bridges...

We learned strategy, how to plan for not tomorrow but for the war to continue and continue for ever if needed be. We learned logistics, to make sure that warriors had the food, the water, the arrows and all the rest they would need to attack the enemy – and to make sure that the enemy did not have the same. They taught us the human kind of discipline, it was annoying at start but we arranged an exhibition, drilling and marching along in closed order and the gawping astonishment of the villagers gave all of us a good taste! We met with warriors of other kinds - sea warriors, spies, scouts, agitators, healers etc. and learned how to cooperate well with them. We were visited by various experts at special fields and given special lessons – once we even had toruk makto explaining us about the importance of picking out right people for special jobs.

Then came the day of final testing. We made a fake war against the warrior school of another tribe and with one exception all of us, of both schools, made a good impression and passed. Two years of training had been successful. So a ceremony was arranged, our karyu asked us one by one to come forth and hand in the adorned black armband we had worn as trainees  
and get a brown belt of srung olo'kumpongu eyktan in return, to the applause of all bystanders.

There was no job for me at my own Big Cliff clan but the neighbouring Ali'tutean clan needed a srung olo'kumpongu eyktan and they got me. And I was lucky to get this job, Zo'ar showed to be a natural warrior with a keen sense for what is useful in every situation, he taught me a lot too. So I started to teach the warriors the same tactical and disciplinary abilities as I had learned myself, and the best one out of ten of them were given a black armband as siltsan tsamshiu (elite warriors), and given some tawtute weapon to fight with on top of the bow, knife and spear. Some elementaries I also taught the hunters, scouts and other people of the clan.

We felt strong, competent and foxy smart too as warriors. Come what may and we'll defeat it!

Days would however come when I needed to put the abilities I had learned and taught to my warriors, and to the Ali'tutean scouts and hunters too...

**The Hurricane Is upon Us!  
**In hindsight I understand that the first omen of what was to come was the male who one day came to us, saying his name was Tirom'u, that he had come from the Zakali clan out in the western sea and just wanted to chat a little before he would be on his way again. Not that we had heard about that clan before, but it might have seceded from another one recently. So we thought. He just wanted to talk about what it was like here at Namana Land, who we cooperated with, who were our friends, our enemies, how the Namana Federation was governed etc. Why, it might even be possible to recruit some islander clans to our ring of friendly clans! We told him what he asked for, and it didn't occur to anyone at the time that there was more about him than met the eyes.

But then one day the news came with a messenger that someone had tried to assassinate the son of toruk makto. And somebody had really killed the daughter of the olo'eyktan at the Atoll Islands out in the Eastern Sea. What was going on? The answer came a few days later, one of those "Zakali" was captured in the Mountain Clan land and brought to the Tree of Souls. That "Zakali" was then revealed to be a sly talker of the tawtute, who intended to create chaos among us and so had tried to assassinate, with success in the islands but without by the Omatikaya.

The alarm now started chiming, emissaries went out to the friends of the tawtute that they had been misled. But they were not heeded so a war kumpongu was raised. Luckily the Ali'tutean ay'kumpongu didn't participate at the Battle at the Stone Covered Well, a grace of Eywa because the battle was a horrendous defeat.

The day after the battle Jakesully's helper Tsailoni came to us and sat down to discuss with the ay'eyktan of the Ali'tutean clan.

"A long and hard war is now ahead. This will not be a war like the Great Battle, this time we will fight not like a herd of angtsikä but like a pack of nantang. We'll sneak up on the enemy, take as many as we can of the tawtute - but only as many as we have to of their Na'vi friends, they are not evil only fooled by the wily ay'tawtute. We should rather turn them around, to make them our friends in the next round. In any case we get away as soon as possible after we have taken down our marks, before they can come and take on us. And any time our spies tell us that one clan has become despondent after useless fighting, we will grab the opportunity with turning them around, over to our friendship, we have our ways to convince them.

But we now need to ask the clan to take some general measures. You should leave your home tree and hide in small groups in the forest nearby, your home tree is a simple target for enemy attack. But we can leave a few there, as bait for attackers and then take them if they take the bait.

If we take tawtute prisoners we should not kill them or mistreat them in any way, we must always be what they not always are - civilized! We should take them to home trees in small groups and treat them as our guests, not very welcome guests may be but still. Then we can tell the tawtute, look how well we are treating our prisoners! That will be bad for their fighting spirit.

You need to accept among you refugees from the plains and the bare coastline, it is harder to hide there than in the much denser forests where you live. They need your assistance in the times to come, and they will most probably return the favours in kind in time. Their time of war action will come later on, when we are ready to go on the main attack.

When our spies tell us that one mine is ill defended then we'll attack it. We destroy it as well as we can, the mines are after all the reason that the tawtute are here at our world at all. After pillaging a mine we immediately return to the forest before the defenders come to destroy us.

Thus we shall steadily weaken them, until they in the end have to withdraw from our lands. This I and toruk makto Jakesully and the other leaders of the federation have agreed upon, after a careful debate. Orders for your participation in various special attacks will come in time, until then you can prey on tawtute coming into your territory without risking too much.

Should you be visited by sly talkers offering you sky people weaponry in return for grey rocks then accept, give them rocks and then you can turn those arms over to other clans who may need them better if you don't have the power to participate in attacks. Then those arms will be put to good use, we'll see to that!

Your warriors may in this war often be out of the conflict but still your scouts can do useful job. A discovered enemy is almost as valuable as a killed enemy! Scouts should keep looking for the enemy whereabouts all the time, reporting to the scouting master every move they walk. The scouting master can then report to us in the leadership, we will then decide when it is advantageous to take on them, and thus those not fighting will know in good time that the enemy is approaching. Remember how a pack of nantang often may stalk their prey for a long time, until the opportunity is right to attack. No sooner and no later. So scouts should always try to stay out of skirmishes, their task is before and after, and of course our own talkers and spies are scouts too.

In sum, we shall be the invisible enemy of the tawtute, there will be an eye and an ear behind every three in the forest and we strike whenever we see fit, otherwise they will never find anything but shadows. One enemy warrior down without any fallen of us will be a victory good enough for now.

Such elusive ways have worked well often before at Earth, so why not here? They have an undisputable advantage in technology but we know the nature, the land and the peoples. We are fighting for our own land against an enemy we know well, toruk makto Jakesully has taught us a lot, they are not. That is another advantage for us.

Now I leave to give these orders to other clans too."

**The First Raid**  
A time of small scale skirmishing began. There was a lot of hiding, fleeing to ever new hideouts again and again for females, kids and the elderly, and from time to time arrows were shot out of the shadows and rockets struck down a helicopter cruising in the sky. Very significant it was that our warriors during this period built up a knowledge about handling Sky People's warriors, their strong and weak points – such topics you need to learn by experience because it can't be taught. Also important was that our warriors developed a reputation as elusive shadows with a nasty bite in return among the clans of the "Ocean Federation" – a reputation that probably in time could be exchanged for one declaring us as powerful enemies in offence too…

Once Sky People warriors came to a clan they thought had made peace with them after they had been contacted, only to experience that warriors of the clan stabbed the Sky people leaders and warriors, whereupon the clans promptly disappeared in the forest. So they stopped trusting deals their talkers (diplomatic negotiators) had made.

In the end they stopped entering the forest unless in big raids, which they rarely did as there were few targets offered them by us the Na'vi. Jakesully could in other words start to think in terms of offensive action out of the forest. At the western coastline the forest came right down to the sea in the territory of the U'o'ne and Sunara clans, so that was where the sea warriors of the federation raised their base. They raided island after island by night, after careful preparation by our talkers and spies. But such action was mostly for the sea warriors to handle, plus those islanders they turned to be our friends, few mainlander land warriors took part in that campaign.

However, one day Namana Land grand master of warriors, Yeff, paid us a visit.

"Our spies have told us that mine in the Stingbat clan's land – a small clan, vassals under the Amananga – is currently ill guarded. It is close to a tongue of forest we can take cover in until we are ready to attack it. The Eymastua will then ride fa'li to attack on the ground while you and the Big Cliff warriors will protect the riders from the air. Should the enemy counterattack then keep them back until those on the ground are safe. They will retreat into the small forest and so will you when they are safe. There will be an olo'kumpongu of Eymastua hunters there, ready to receive them. And a Zazawä olo'kumpongu of warriors, those siltsan tsamshiu are armed with rockets meant for ay'kunsip. You see, this is a major attack, if they give chase you should only get as far as the forest and then it is ready set go."

So at dawn the day after we lay hiding in the vegetation close to the mine, I and the rest of the Ali'tutean warrior kumpongu. We heard the trumpet of the fa'li-riders and saw them ride out, and then we waited for our signal and then we heard the flute - to the air! We arrived above the mine about the same time as the fa'li-riders bore down on it, the Stingbat clanspeople working there ran in any which direction, the Eymastua came over a tawtute who tried to raise the Stingbat clanspeople to arms but he was quickly struck down by an Eymastua spear. Having driven away the workers and miners on the ground the pa'li-riders dismounted and proceeded with destroying everything they could of mining equipment and constructions. They hurried, they knew that Stingbat clan warriors probably were soon coming.

Tara-tara-tara-tiiii! That trumpet signal meant "tally-ho, enemy sighted"! I looked around - lo and behold, there they came flying, those ikran-riders. Rather late, but they could still do damage to us. The fa'li-riders were already in full retreat, now it was up to us in the air to keep the enemy flyers at bay until they could disappear in the forest.

So fighting ensued up in the air. They lost and we lost, and then we broke off from the encounter, they would as a matter of self-evidence pursue us now and not the riders down on the ground. So we withdrew to the trees and they pursued us there - and met a withering fire from the hunters up in the trees.

End of the story was six lost to us versus almost sixty to the enemy. The riders then attacked the mining site and destroyed whatever they could, and plundered any tawtute weaponry they could find there – not so many after all, there were few of them at the site. Afterwards we heard from our spies that the success of the raid had prompted the tawtute eyktan (somebody in the Sky People leadership) to give up mining in that mine. And a couple of weeks afterwards the agitators of the Federation landed at the Stingbat clan home tree, soon after this small clan defected over to our side and fled into the forest to us. In sum: brilliant success!

Their olo'eyktan understood fully well that defecting over to our side was the intelligent thing to do but still he was unhappy to cut loose from the clan they had been vassals under since times immemorial, the Amananga. Exile from their home tree was an unhappy affair too. Yeff cheered him up: "Calm down, buddy. In not so long time you will be together with the  
Amananga once again, you can one day join in their tribe to be under their vassalage once again, it will probably be named the "North Point tribe". This will be your choice alone. They will join us too and in not so very long time - it is my promise! And you will soon move back to your home tree again - that is also my promise!"

The terms "not so long time" and "soon" are relative, however... But in the evening that day we were told that the tawtute had been driven off the Western Ocean Island, now the sea warriors were on to two of the larger islands in the archipelago, the Bokoyw and Tu'kutx. The battles for those islands would be decisive.

**Planning Another Raid against a Mine  
**Then a spy reported that the two other mines in Amananga and their vassals' land would now be under guard by Sky People warriors. Repeating the success at the Stingbat mine would be much harder this time round, with dug in warriors around and helicopters close by, also because those mines were much further away from the forest.

Yeff went to have some talks with Jakesully, Tsailoni and others in the leadership, to listen to fresh spy reports... and to fish for inspiration for ideas!

I have later been told that it was a not a warrior but a hunter who had the good idea - the former dreamwalker named Erniengum. "During the last raid our flyers fled into the protection of the trees and the warriors hidden there. But do we have to hide them among trees? Why not dig them down into the ground and then let them hide in the hole under dried moss mats, then they can tear open the mats on given signal and shoot down 'copters. Also I can try to see if my own little trick can be for good use this time too, it has worked well before. A herd of big animals is a good cover for our assembling war party too."

"Not a bad idea but it needs some work. We'll then need to know about how many 'copters there are, we do not have overly many rockets to waste. And we must find out if there are defence towers and other defences at the sites, if so it means that this site is untouchable at least for now."

"Agree, but they don't have equipment to erect endless many defences either. It is at least worth an investigation by some scout."

So was done. The scout found out that there were only two towers, autocannons and air batteries. Not many but still something to consider. And three ay'kunsip and walking machines, plus some twenty warriors on the ground, of course in addition to some seventy ikran- and pa'li-riders of the Black Cliff clan, another vassal clan of the Amananga. Looked like they intended to hang on to that mine... The other mine was even further away, not far from the Amananga home tree itself.

The spy who went to take a more careful look at the mining compound gave an interesting report some days later. The tawtute had constructed three buildings there, all of them prefabricated and flown in, they all looked much like the small building where Jakesully had hid his tawtute body during the Great Battle. She said that one of them was much larger than the others, and she had seen them enter that building in the evening with droopy eyes and come out of it in the morning, looking fresher. Sleeping house, she guessed. The other one was a smaller one, only two or three of them entered that house for any long time, and outside it she saw the storage pen where boxes with grey rocks were put together. A working house  
for the ay'eyktan of the mine, she guessed. Their "office", the former dreamwalkers said. And finally there was another small and windowless house, with lots of long rods on the roof, where only one person at the time used to sit for any long time.

Hearing about that last house, the ears of Yeff stiffened and stood up erect. "That last small house must be the control central and radio station, where they talk with their headquarter at Amananga garrison and the people at the mine, and control the defences. If something could cut off that house it would seriously hamper their defence of the mine. I wonder if it might be possible to ask a spy to do something military, just for once..."

He asked leader of spies Neytiri, mate of Jakesully, for a spy willing to take this job and was given young Yewetiri. She was present at the meeting where all leaders of the raid came to be told what to, how to, when to and why to do all sorts of thing during the raid. "Now Yewetiri, I have a task for you that might well earn you a tasselled scouting helmet (badge of respect, like a medal at Earth)."

Her eyes widened in anticipation.

"We have destroyed the Stingbat mine. We are now about to destroy the Black Cliff mine, we start action day after tomorrow but then we must have made our preparations finish.

Our problem is that the tawtute warriors have built defences there and there are some ay'kunsip and walking machines. It is vital to put the tawtute towers out of action and to stop them from calling for assistance from all the rest of the tawtute. This is your job Yewetiri: First you infiltrate this mining base. You can then find a small house close to the mine with many rods on the roof. When you have found it you take this stone and open the door into it (a hand grenade). Then you pull out this ring and immediately throw it indoors, then you close the door at once and run away as fast as you can. Finally you leave the base as soon as you safely can. That stone will make the house go BOOOM! It is a very dangerous stone so make sure to do precisely like I now told you. Open door, pull out ring, throw inside, close door, run away. In this very order."

"Understood."

"Next section in the action plan is for those riding pa'li. They are to attack the base as soon they hear the explosion at the mine base. It will not be a serious attack, just a feint to woo the tawtute along. Retreat as soon as you see any kunsip and back off to behind the big rocks. Then you will be safe. There you stay until you see a rocket with a green flame through the air, then you ride to attack them. Have you understood your part of the plan, Zizipx?"

"Yes I have."

"Fine. Now for the main action. Ali'tutean and Mountaineer warriors, you are to dig holes in the ground for all of you, two by two, in the night and then creep down into them before dawn. Pull moss mats over you, to hide you from enemy eyes. You will hear pa'li-feet on the ground, it is a signal to get ready. Then when you hear pa'li feet galloping by second time, it is time to creep out, the enemy is now coming. There are three ay'kunsip and equally many walking machines, so you are given twenty four rockets and that should suffice. Against their ikran-riding guns and bow is sufficient, we must reserve the rockets for the ay'kunsip and walking machines. And here is a special rocket, a signal rocket with a green flame, fire that one when all kunsip and walking machines have been shot down or are fleeing, that will be a signal for ikran- and pa'li-riders to ride in and finish off the base. You have also been given guns to defend yourselves against enemy ikran-flyers. Zo'ar and Talfikx, have you understood your part of the plan?"

"Yes."

"All right. Final part of the team are the ikran-riding hunters of the Mountain clan, your turn is now. When you see that green-tailed light you are to immediately take to the air and ride to the mining base. Together with the pa'li-riders you attack anyone resisting there, and destroy  
anything you can. Pursue any tawtute trying to escape. Kxapxe, you got it?"

Erniengum broke in at that point: "If I have managed to herd in a herd of angtsikä I unleash them then, too."

"All of you: Take well care of our misled brothers and sisters of clans for the moment allied with Sky People, they are not evil people just naïve, they are our future friends. Fleeing Na'vi are not to be touched, and take wounded 'future friends' to healers on the double. But bring down or take prisoner all Sky people you see. All of you, anything not clear as day?"

"I have seen it." "And I." "I too." "And me." ...

"Finally, I have very positive news for all of you. Our sea warriors have captured the Bokoyw out west, together with local islander clans! We who fight on land shouldn't be any worse than them, agree?"

**Attack on Black Cliff Mine  
**The plan was elaborate and of course some snag would arise - but a well made plan has flexibility to allow for the unexpected. Yeff gave us reason to think that he had kept that in mind and had tried to retain that flexibility. He had asked Neytiri for an intelligent spy and he had probably got what he had asked for when he was given Yewetiri.

From a friend of mine who talked with her afterwards, I heard what the spy Yewetiri could tell about her actions at the mine. She landed her ikran and hid him in a small grove some distance away from the mine, and then strode towards the mine with the heavy blasting stone – the hand grenade – in a pouch at the hip and adorned like a northerner. She came to the mining area and tried to look busy, to not attract attention as an unknown. Infiltration ability was what had made Yeff ask for a spy to handle this task.

She soon found three small houses tightly together. The description fit – one rather big with many windows in a long row and a door at the short end. Not the house of interest. One smaller with a lot of stone in a bin outside. Not the house of interest either. But that had to be it – one small, boxlike and without windows, with a big array of rods standing up on the roof. She walked to the door in, as all the houses the Sky People built at Pandora it had a double door set with a gas exchange room between the outer and the inner door. She walked to the outer door – but the door couldn't be opened! (She didn't know how to type the keyword at the keyboard by the side of the door, and didn't know the keyword either…) Well now, how to get this stone inside now? Or could it be done in some other way?

A fast glance around – anyone see me right now? Nobody? That's fine! She jumped up on the roof and discovered that all the rods – the antennae – were bundled up together, like a bouquet. She thought to herself: "The heck with it!" Then she dropped her loincloth and stood there stark naked, tied the leather string from her loincloth to the ring in the exploding stone, and dropped it into the middle of the instruments, where her fingers could hardly have wiggled in, and pulled the ring loose with the leather string. And she jumped down and ran.

Other person's POW: Radio-, arms and surveillance technician Elizabeth Baines was sitting at her screen reporting animal herds coming together – rather peculiar with such a large herd, in the direction of the cliffs over there, and talking with her commanding colonel Avellano Cardoso about this, when all of a sudden a big BANG! shook the shack. All the screens instantly went black and the gas alarm went off, she immediately grabbed her emergency exopack and donned it. Then she rose up, took her sidearm and ran out.

Another person's POW: Outside a digger came running from the pit. He saw a naked female coming running and asked her: "What is going on over there?" She hastily replied: "Don't know for sure, just heard a big BANG! My loincloth was torn off me by the blast, someone may need help there, I am running to get it!"

I was lying hidden in my dug in hole in the ground at a hillside, so I had a view of the mining site in the distance when the blast happened. I lifted the mat above me and my warrior partner a little bit and looked out. It looked like utter confusion reigned in the mining site. People were running around in confusion, a small building looked like cracked… And then I heard the pounding feet of the fa'li thundering by.

I could see them shooting and spearing around down there. But suddenly I saw a kunsip – no three of them – in the air. I heard a trumpet tooting and they made a full retreat. Now our turn was imminent. "Ready your drum!" I ordered my partner. Then I heard the thundering feet passing by again – and the buzzing sound of the ay'kunsip. I peeped out and called out: "In range! Drum!"

The signal sounded, up rose the hidden warriors, two rockets struck an kunsip and then another one got three, the last one was struck too but managed to evade the second rocket meant for it, it turned and returned to base. Then we all went back down into hiding, the walking machines and ikran-riders would soon be coming too! And they came and met with the same barrange, all of them were taken down, the ikran-riders turned and ran for it. Then I saw a green flame in the air – the signal rocket, fired by Zo'ar! Down into cover now!

Now the heavy feet pounded heavier than ever, a whole herd of angtsikä stampeded, behind them the fa'li-riders rode in again, and I knew that up in the air there were lots of ikran-riders too. Woe unto anyone at the mining site now!

The rampage was destructive to put it delicately! Anything of use to us was plundered, anything that could burn was set on fire, or it was tumbled over, cracked or broken. We caught fifteen Sky People warriors and probably killed equally many, we brought them to a home tree as prisoners of war – we calmed them down with promising them that no harm would come to them now. And then we retired. I guessed that someone among their eyktan were very angry now!

The day after there was a small celebration, we only lost four of those who had hid in hoes – one of them was trampled by an angtsik – three on fa'li and two on ikran. Yeff was all glee when he offered the once again dressed Yewetiri a flying helmet with a white tassel. We later learned that the mine was attempted put to production again later but they were not to have time for complete repairs, their time at Namana Land was ebbing. They had had bad losses during the raid, they had only three olo'kumpongu (companies) left now at the Amananga garrison, a spy told us. One of them was chasing shadows in the forest, another one was weak and in for refitting and one was ready for action.

A week later they had a success, they raided and destroyed our radio station – but lost two more ay'kunsip. However the day after the news broke that the tawtute had suffered a serious defeat when they tried to recapture Tu'kutx Island and then the day after that again the attack at Jakesully himself badly misfired. Jake grabbed the initiative then, the Amananga home tree was visited and this time they listened to what he had to say. Suddenly the now single and weakened Sky People kumpongu at the base found themselves under siege and they immediately evacuated the base when they discovered that the Amananga had deserted them. And those in the forest broke off and fled over to Marakxali Island like them.

**Rest & Recuperation – and a New Target**  
It was an occasion for a party when all tawtute had left the Namana Land, we thought. We thought we had earned it, we had had losses of young men and women and we needed to return to everyday life to stock up food, garment etc. The party became all the merrier when someone brought the news that all the islands out west had won over to our side too, and that unrest had broken out at Nongona Land far to the west. Probably they would soon come to their senses and take our side too? Soon, perhaps?

We not only had earned our right to recuperate, we even needed it, we had to fill up the ranks of warriors with new recruits to be inaugurated. Those who had been wounded would need time to recuperate and train back to strength. And according to what I heard from other clans, the need to sit down and take rest was widespread.

But apart from recuperation etc. we were of course given duties too. Some of our warriors were given escort duties when our agitators were roaming around, agitating among wavering clans for the advantages with joining one of the budding federations against the Sky People. Knowledgable warriors, history tellers and ay'eyktan from Namana Land soon followed them, building up one federation after another, for starters with constitutions much like the Namana Land federation, with adaptations to local conditions. That way we added a lot of warriors to our side against them.

But still there was a standoff between the Atoll archipelago, Marakxali Island and the Gargoyle Fish Land. How to overcome that? They somehow did manage it, for suddenly one day we got to hear that the two former had joined us and the Sky People had been driven out of there, with very serious losses. Jubilation again, joining in a party was in order even though the warriors of the Ali'tutean clan had not participated in the attack.

But having regained our power some of our hunting parties took part in the airborne skirmishes against the last Sky People garrison that still remained. Those hunters participated honourably, they didn't overcome any kunsip but still lost three ikran-riders. But other skirmishers succeded, our warrior olo'kumpongu was among the six kumpongu that went ashore Gargoyle Fish Land.

Before we were paddled out we listened to briefings by the nxi kumpongu eyktan Zingitar, who had been given command of the land fighting operation. He told us:

"These are utterly peaceful clans. More than ever it is important to behave nice with them. We have had spies give us a detailed picture and our agitators are active already, so we have a pretty good image of conditions. Which is why you land at the southern coast, there are some clans there who are well drawn on to our side there. With them as a base you will go from clan to clan, offer your protection that is demonstrably better than the tawtute can manage, and when you meet with those people then fight them. That will be a demonstration of your ability to defend them the civilized way. You are not likely to meet many of them, they are striving with defending their base against repeated air attacks by ikran riders. When you then make contact with the base defences, give report."

Coming ashore in the night at the beach we had been told to land at, we were met with an agitator at the beach. He guided us to the discussion circle of the clan, we presented our offer and with a trump card: The bundled up Sky People miner we had met with in the forest. The five other warrior kumpongu and the six other hunter kumpongu did much of the same. Soon we were stalking the base itself. But one day we were sneaking through the forest when suddenly WHOOOOSH! BOOOM! A rocket from a defence tower struck down just a few paces away from us, that warrior closest by had to be taken to a healer afterwards but he survived. But that was the demonstration Zingitar had asked for so now he got his report.

**Planning to Take the Last Garrison**  
Three days later Zingitar delivered us rockets for use against defence towers, and we sat down to plan the action against them.

Zingitar struggled with the problem of how to overcome the defences of the base. He couldn't see any way of doing it, and asked for Yeff to come and advice us like he had done before. But having cooperated with him before, Zingitar knew that he would want intelligence about the station, so a spy was sent in to look around there.

The spy was ready with the report when Yeff arrived. First he made a statement: "Our advantage has all the time been that the enemy has underestimated our knowledge of technology and measures to neutralize their technological advantage. We must if possible somehow try to keep on doing that." He then asked the spy what he had seen in there.

"Many buildings, there is a big and very tall one with many rods on the roof." "That is the Central Command and Control tower. With offices in the lower floors. If we could smash the CCC tower it would do the same as we did at the Black Cliff mine, blinding the defences. But it is most probably under heavy guard and lots of gas security, no use in trying to sneak in and try to blast it. Neither is it possible to jam the radio communication, they have switched to different identifications, frequencies and linkings, so the computer wizards can't blind the defences."

Zingitar knew that he was talking about those people who were working at what was left of the old Sky People's den not very far from Tree of Souls and the Omatikaya New Hometree. He understood that they were able to work tawtute magic against the enemy, he would never understand what they were doing but it must have been powerful, since they had blinded the base defences.

"Eight big buildings, four floors tall, and with many windows. Five of them are in ruins." "That is the barracks, where they are sleeping and resting, some of them badly damaged by a rail gun shell we fired when we took the Sea Maggot Island base. Useless for a small scale attack, we would need a huge bomb to take them down. Or a rail gun hit."

"One big building, with many windows, people going in and out all day sometimes in a jolly or talkative mood, at times a horn signal is sounding from the roof, in the morning, at noontime and in the evening." "That is the mess hall, also with a cinema, bath house and a gym. Not very valuable as a target either."

"A big building with a large entrance, side by side a huge but destroyed building. Lots of ay'kunsip and walking machines outside." "The technical repair workshop. Might be a good target for attack if none else is available – if we could push in a sufficiently large bomb…"

"A not very large building, built from very thick stone, without windows. With only one entrance and no double door." "The arsenal, the storage house for their weaponry. Might be a useful target for attack too – but it is probably under very heavy guard."

"A small house, in the outskirts of the base, with many strings from the roof to other houses at the base." "Must be their power station. Might be a useful target, best I have heard about so far."

"Several open areas, one of them with a long, narrow house facing a row of round plates with a spot on. Another has a very large, flat stone on the ground and an unwalled house with lots of grey rock under the roof close by." "The first one is part of their training facility, it is their shooting range, where they train to shoot their guns. The second one is their landing pad of the sky ikran, that unwalled building close by is the storage house for ore to be delivered up to the sky."

"Finally there is an unwalled house located in a grove of trees, in a corner of the base." "That is their reception hall, where they invite their guests from the clans of the land. Well, from what I have heard the power station seems to be the most inviting target. So now I want a closer description of what it look like and where it is located."

"It is the northern corner of the base, standing at a distance from other buildings. The house is rather small, on the roof are many rods and bulbs, like a forest of metal, out of that funny assembly goes the strings that run from house to house. Sometimes there is a humming sound from the building. I never saw anyone go in or out of it. It doesn't have any double door for gas exchange."

"I can explain. The house is standing at a distance from the rest of the base because they are afraid that the power production processes, where our infamous unobtanium is involved, can go wrong and the whole place goes BOOOM! For everydays the house is remotely controlled from the CCC tower building, so it isn't every day that anyone need to into it. It is small, it is only the production going on inside there, much of the building is dug down into the ground. The door is only there to allow repairers entry inside in case it should malfunction. The rods and bulbs on the roof are for distributing power to the different buildings of the base, according to need and also to allow for byways should one power line be destroyed. The humming you heard means that a malfunction is threatening, when the humming stops it means that the problem has been taken care of by the techies. That is everyday coming and going, not something they care too much about. It doesn't have double doors and gas exchange because technical problems inside there might need to be repaired at once, no time to waste with a gas exchange, better to go inside still wearing exopack.

Now the question is: How are we to put this building out of action, more precisely – put an end to what is going on inside it? We could try to throw grenades up on the roof – dangerous because the power going through those lines is mighty! And a big forest of transformators and lines on the roof means that they have built byways to get the power around if one line starts acting up. We should rather go to the root. One bomb to blast open the door, then throw some bombs in to make some mayhem in there. Don't try to enter through the door, the environment inside there is very dangerous! Having done this they should run away on the double and into the forest, if they have succeeded the towers should be more or less "asleep".

Having thrown those bombs in it is time for the spies to evacuate the base at once. When the blasts from the house has come to an end, the warriors in the forest nearby can shoot a green signal rocket, it means that the defence systems are "asleep" – they can safely be approached and shot up with rockets. Only do it quickly, the ay'kunsip are probably up to defend the base now.

Only one problem is left. Can we get our agents into the base incognito, without being discovered? And later evacuated with as little risk as possible? I will go ask Norm for some scouts who can talk a passable imitation of the local dialect and know their traditions of dressing and behaviour otherwise, and see if they are willing to go for it."

**Action against the Power Station**  
(Note from author: The first paragraphs from the point of view of the participants of the sting action.)

In the night a canoe paddled from Marakxali Island towards Gargoyle Fish Land. Eleven scouts waded ashore, ten scouts and one able scout who was Rautu, leader of the team. They had brought the equipment for the action in pouches in their belts. All had been given special tasks to do in the coming action, they were given code names reflecting their tasks for convenience when in action.

They soon established base in the home tree of a "turned" clan close to the enemy base. They donned adornment etc. to look like the locals and made a last rehearsal of the plan, in the best imitation they could manage of the local dialect. And then they set out in the morning.

First of all in the morning they went to the mine pit and asked the engineer present for tools to dig with. They were given and dug like so many did. Lunch time came, food was served for them by the cooks the miners had hired to work as such, and then back to work. At end of the day the engineer told them that they had dug out an appreciable heap of ore – "Now take it to the weighing station to hand it in. Good job, all of you, lads and lassies!"

Carrying ore they now had a reason to go to the base that wasn't for anyone to doubt. That was the reason stooping to work in the mine for a day…

They handed the stones in and the clerk at the weighing station then told them to go to have their well deserved evening meal. Well they walked that direction but didn't sit down at the fire pit, they continued on towards the base perimeter. Rautu saw the building in the waning light: "That is the power station!" she whispered. They walked over to its outer side, the door in faced the rest of the base.

Now Guard 1 took up position with his bow to protect those at work from intruding eyes, as did Guard 2 and Guard 3. Fire put a blanket on the ground and poured some charcoal into it from her pouch, and ignited a small fire. Meanwhile all the rest of them took their makeshift bombs and readied them – blocks of mining explosive with fuses. Then Blaster took his charge and fixed his bomb to the door, in the fissure between the door and the wall, and fixed the fuse to it. When the fire was burning Fire dipped the torch she was given by Rautu in it, and when it burned she walked around the corner to the door and lighted the fuse. Then she ran back behind the house and they all bent down, protecting their ears.

The blast was violent. The door was only slightly ajar but it could be pulled out easily. Now all of them lighted the fuses of their own bombs – all at once, now every second was vital! Rautu screamed: "Hurry up, they will be here very soon now!" Then they all threw their bombs with burning fuses through the door they had blasted open and then they ran into the darkness. When the five blasts had come to an end, the base would have no power – at least for some minutes to come – so they could run out and away into the jungle.

Five loud explosions were heard, and they ran for their lives. Then came an explosion that seemingly could have waken the dead, so loud it was. The defence towers made no protest when they passed them by…

(Elizabeth Baines had barely escaped from the debacle at the Black Rock mine with her life. She was now sitting and monitoring the general situation report screen at the CCC tower. Life was good here, far better than at a hardscrabble outstation mine. It had become noticeably less comfortable after the fall of Sea Maggot Island base but still… BOOOM! An explosion was heard. "What was that?" Security chief on watch Barney Ennery said: "Don't know but it sounded like at the power station. I better send some techies over there to have a look at what is going on over there…" But then five muted explosions came in quick succession and the light went out, all screens went black and the familiar hum of the ventilation system became silent. And perhaps a minute later a huge explosion came that made the CCC tower tremble. The base sirene went off, everyone were instantly at foot, heading for their alarm positions. Looking towards the power station they saw that it had been blasted to small pieces, and flames stood up from the innards of the station like from a furnace.

Elizabeth yelled: "Emergency power!" And now they heard one explosion after another from the defences – she saw colonel Avellano Cardoso howling: "The Na'vi are attacking our base defences! Get out there and drive them away pronto!" But the fox had run away in the night now, the towers, AA batteries and the autocannons were all in various state of destruction.

At daybreak the disaster could really be assessed. The power station was completely wrecked, the power from the emergency generator now had to really do many jobs! No movies, cold water in the showers and mostly cold food from now on, until the power station could be replaced! After the successful destruction of the main power supply of the base, the situation looked even grimmer than ever. The colonel thought to himself that may be he had been foolhardy when he rejected the demand for surrender of that diplomat?)

(POW of U'ok again:)

When the defence systems had been eliminated, it became much simpler for us to attack the base from air. The early warning systems were about the only piece of the defence system left, and it was possible to fool it by flying through the forest canopy. They tried to rebuild the defences and the power station but our warriors never left them in peace to do it, we had completely taken over the initiative now and they suffered severe losses. A week later our diplomat at Gargoyle Fish Land took contact with them again and reminded them about their hopeless situation, they duly accepted a day long ceasefire. I and my Ali'tutean kumpongu took part in the parade that day, I gleefully saw the eyes of the tawtute when they beheld our little… I think Yeff called it a small "tattoo". This was warfare to my liking: Lots of display and no blood shed!

The day after we got to hear that our parade had succeeded with its task, the enemy was now about to surrender! We all felt exceedingly happy, I embraced Zo'ar my boss and many others did likewise, we laughed and joked. Some reacted in different ways though, I saw a warrior who spontaneously gave a loud thanksgiving to Eywa who had persuaded the enemy to accept the inevitable and I saw a few who had broken down in tears, there was even one who fainted. And there was one hot-headed one who cursed: "… but I had wanted to really get in close and intimate with them, now I'll never get to avenge my sister! Dammit!" But afterwards, once the wildest jubilation had died down, nxi'kumpongu eyktan Zingitar lined us up in a formal parade, and led all of us in a solemn, heartfelt and formal homage to Eywa for her grace with saving many lives from an ultimate slaughter.

**Victory!**  
A week later the final, ceremonial surrender took place, I and my olo'kumpongu took part. The ceremony was a spectacle I am no doubt going to tell my grandchildren lots about, the feeling of history in the making was awesome. That evening I went by canoe over to Sea Maggot Island and rejoined my faithful ikran, and we flew back to Ali'tutean home tree. Where I met with my own little soon-to-be mate, we first met at the victory party after the conquest of that island, she was of the Mountaineer clan.

The day after our return from the surrender ceremony a big celebration took place. The food was lavish and exquisite, a cook had been brought in from my own old Big Cliff clan to take care of the serving. There was dancing, socializing – I think that two or three of my own warriors got themselves mates that evening! I met with Yeff, he was obviously having a rather too good time, he even after some time started showing signs of having emptied a little too many cups of drink!

Many of all crafts were decorated for their contributions to the victory with items in brown, white or yellow, however peripheral contributions. Not only warrior's archery bracelets, hunter's feathers, sea warrior's paddle handle and scout helmets with tassels, but also the Omatikaya weavers were awarded a brown or white weaver's spindle of honour for crafting the banner of the Na'vi federations. Some of the awardings went across craft limits, Erniengum got not only a hunter's yellow feather but a warrior's yellow archery armlet as well. Another item in the partying was more solemn gratitudes expressed to Eywa – most of all at the Tree of Souls I later heard.

The feasting lasted for days.

And then everydays were back – but not before we had had time to sleep out after the feasting! As an experienced warrior olo'kumpongu eyktan I was asked to take some years with establishing the warrior school for Northern Land, a single one should do for their not very many clans. Having done that, two years later I was notified that a promotion to tribal n-i-c was available for me – if I cared… it most certainly did – and I became srung nxi'kumpongu eyktan. Lady Luck was smiling at me! And she kept smiling at me, I am now a happy father with a son and a daughter of my own.

U'ok now put a period mark to the story of his war experiences.


	2. With Old Nick at Our Side

**With "Old Nick" on Our Side**

When in a struggle it is important to know both the enemy's abilities and problems as well as those of own side, so coming warrior leaders and clan – tribal – federation leaders were taught some central points of Earth culture at the schools Jake established. Among others some tenets of faith systems common at Earth, not for missionary purpose but for knowing ways and opinions in sawtute brains, such teaching was mostly a subject for Norm to handle.

Jake was once passing by a warrior class while Norm was explaining about Christianity, topic of the day was the eternal bliss or punishment meted out for those who behaved well or not. Jake saw one of the cadets raise up after raising his hand, to pose Norm a question and saw the shorn hair and the tail of the cadet. Some time later he saw that Norm was finish with his lesson for today and the cadets went to make ready for a tactical exercise, he saw the cadets apply body paint. A thought began to develop in Jake's head.

Later that day Jake sat at a meeting with some tribal leaders and discussed the ongoing conflict with the New RDA. Jeff and Norm were also present, along with Neytiri of course. The impression was clear that at least a small scale victory would be needed to gain back the initiative after the disastrous defeat at the Battle at the Stone covered well, to shore up the wavering clans if all the Namana Land federation was not to totter. It was plain psychology. And without at least a small defeat propaganda would have little effect on the humans, however able they were at the broadcasting station at the ruins of Augustine.

"We could need a psychological advantage over the RDA mercenaries. Which one?" Jake asked the leaders.

"If we could frighten them with the power of Eywa once again, like at the Great Battle when the animals attacked, then we could strike them with panic. That would be an advantage!" So said the tribal leader of the Southern Plains Tribe.

Suddenly Jake rose and gazed with big eyes! "An attack on their cool! I got an idea!" He sat down again. "If we can isolate a troop of sawtute in the forest I know something that will shake them to the innermost of their nerves! But it is risky!"

"Let's take this idea still, Toruk Makto! Tell us!" "We'll show them something they think is what they out of tradition fear more than most things. Even if they don't care about this for everydays they will still be stunned and give us an opportunity to take on them." He elaborated, and Norm and Jeff roared with laughter to the astonishment of Neytiri.

"What do you need for this action, Toruk Makto?" "We need these things: Firstly a brave young man who has not shaved his head for warfare. Secondly red body paint, a lot of it. Thirdly a tight, thin cap for covering his tswin (hair queue) and a small loincloth. Fourthly this man will need a spear of a very special construction, I better ask Todd to make it – he is our artist with metal nowadays. We need some background decoration too, I'll ask Todd for some powerful loudspeakers. And we'll need many torches for extra effect. What we are going to do is to overcome an enemy kumpongu by startling them and thereby turn them vulnerable."

This sounded like something very funny to the chieftains, but Norm and Jeff knew from their human background what was Jake was preparing for and shared a big glee – those mercenaries were in for some experience! Norm composed a suitable utterance for his own little piece of the action and trained in how to speak it with maximum effect and in a suitable voice.

Tey'tey was recruited, he was an Eymastua toolmaker. His hair was shorn in a very peculiar way, in two thick tufts above each temple. He got a tight cap dyed brightly red with holes for those hair tufts and told to pack his tswin into the cap, and he was given a loincloth with very short apron end also dyed red. And many torches were prepared and made so that the flame would burn with extra flickering fire. So they waited for the golden opportunity.

It came about three weeks later. Captain Fiona Waters and her company were combing through the forest for the elusive enemy, a long day of futile searching was at end so now it would do with a break. She asked her allied na'vi scouts to keep watch up in the trees. The hundred or so mercenaries settled down in front of their helicopters and brought out the food package they had brought from the base while the scouts not on duty settled down over a fire pit. She and her next-in-command master sergeant T. D. Hurley put up a watch list for the night.

Meanwhile Jake got the news that this mercenary raiding party had been sighted in the forest and that they had settled for the night, so he took action to execute his plan. Tey'tey applied his red body paint from top to toe, excluding his hair. He knotted the two tufts in hard knots which he stiffened with a starch-like substance, and he put his cap over his head so that the tswin could be curled up and hidden inside the cap when it was time for action, but with the two knots of hair jutting out through the holes. And he took off the very na'vi loincloth and put on the red loincloth instead. He took that funny spear and mounted his ikran and rode along with Toruk Makto to the glen where the enemy had settled. Other ikrans carried the four big speakers Todd had given Jake, and the many torches head craftsman of the Ekanagi had provided.

So it was time to make ready for the show. The quadraphonic speakers were hidden in the forest around the enemy camp and Jake took the microphone while Todd coupled the speakers to the generator. Kuku the Ekanagi clan warrior leader first had the enemy scouts silently ambushed and then posted his men around the camp with a burning match in hand, ready to ignite the torch when they heard the very, very loud voice of Jake – the torches had been dipped in resin to make them flare up very fast and keep burning for some time, and every torch bearer had a bucket to put out the fire on given command. The Ekanagi hunters took up positions behind the warriors, bows at the ready. And Tey'tey put on the last touch of his masquerade, he curled the tswin up inside his red cap, and he picked the funny spear. Then he crept to his starting position and settled down. And he waited for the signal.

Captain Waters was sitting below her 'copter and slumbering when it happened, at about three in the night. Suddenly a huge voice was blaring:

"I am Jake Sully, lord of the Na'vi and I command all humans to instantly surrender or face the consequences!" Some seconds later the voice proclaimed: "My patience is finish. Come, my good friend Lucifer!" Torches were lit and held up all around, in the darkness the torchbearers were obscured. The mercenaries were afoot at once.

And now the mercenaries beheld a most peculiar sight. In the flickering torch light a figure stood up – red all over, apparently with horns on his head and a long tail, and a holding a trident in his hand. Waters and her people made huuuge eyes and lowered their guns. And all of them felt that the leg muscles had turned into jelly…

Another booming voice (actually Norm's) sneered:

"The gate to eternal damnation is open for you, mortals! Which one should I grab first?"

While the soldiers were still standing transfixed the hunters behind the torch-bearers took action. Bow strings smacked in salvo after salvo, suddenly many of the soldiers fell to the ground and Tey'tey threw his trident at captain Waters, he could see that she had to be the boss here, then he ducked into bushes.

Many of the still standing soldiers now turned tail and ran into the forest. Hurley yelled: "Cowards! Stand to and return fire!" And then a new bow salvo felled him too. But shots were fired, some fell on both sides, then Jake gave the whistle signal and the torches were put down into buckets to extinguish them. Now that darkness fell on the battlefield the warriors who had held up the torches joined the fight too, it dissolved in a tooth-and-nail fighting chaos where na'vi with their better night vision held an advantage. Only two of the six helicopters managed to take to the air by leaving their comrades to their fate, they were instantly pursued by ikran-riders and one of them was brought down.

At daybreak a horrible scene showed. Dozens of men and women lay shot, speared or stabbed on the ground, four helicopters had been blasted. Forty eight mercenaries had fallen in the ambush, thirty more had fled and were missing – they had probably fallen victim to jungle predators, including those who tried to get away in the downed helicopter. Just twenty one who had stood their ground at the battlefield were still alive, as prisoners of the na'vi. And only five managed to get back to base, giving their brothers and sisters in arms a harrowing tale. There had been a "butcher's bill" to pay for the na'vi too, twenty warriors and hunters had gone to Eywa when the gunsmoke drifted away. But the victory was a given.

Brigadier Cox had a report about what had happened from the helicopter crew that escaped and he ordered his troops to stay cool when the opponent was trying to intimidate them. Still, the "Lucifer's Battle" as it came to be called was a tide-turning defeat, henceforth the guerrilla war in the jungle tilted the way of Jake and his na'vi.

A month later the warrior leader of the Swamp clan managed to arrange an ambush at his home tree, a whole platoon was eliminated when the clan the mercenaries had thought was benevolent suddenly revealed otherwise. After that they became far more careful with entering the forest in small groups without a powerful escort of allies, allowing Jake to win over more of the wavering clans. A guerrilla stalemate had set in, now Jake controlled the forest more or less permanently while the plains still belonged to the sawtute.

So Jake could invest in overseas expansion, Deke Gill could put his fledgling navy so far contained at rivers and small lakes to action. Only now, due to the stable situation at Namana Land after "Lucifer's Battle", he could start thinking about going overseas.


	3. Trade and Intelligence

_**Trade and Intelligence**_

Jake and the Namana Na'vi federation he was in charge of had recently won the skirmish nicknamed "Lucifer's Battle". The effect of that battle and its aftermath was that most of the forest and edge-of-forest clans had defected from the "Ocean Federation" and joined the Namana. But at the plains it was harder, with the simpler and longer range view from a helicopter up in the sky it was dangerous to venture too far from the forest lest helicopter patrols would discover them. Many of the clans on the steppes consequently felt the tawtute power as better at protecting them than the Namana Federation no matter how clever they were getting at their guerilla tactics in the forest, those clans had defected the federation after the disastrous Battle at the Stone Covered Well and not rejoined it yet. Some southern clans kept loyal in spite of whatever, such as the Ikran clan of the south coast, they had fought valiantly at the Great Battle and fled into the forest after the lost battle, like other loyalist clans outside the forest. Jake, Tsailoni, Jeff and Neytiri needed some resounding victory to undermine the RDA dominance over the plains.

They sat and pondered how. Jeff, the top military commander of the federation, stated that a stalemate was now reigning between the plains and the forest, one which the na'vi probably would win in the long run since the enemy simply couldn't afford not to strike into the forest given all the mineral in deposits in the forest. But then Jake protested:

"I think you are rather optimistic now, Jeff. We know that we are up against a brigade, two regiments and a supporting company that is, we have 'trimmed' it a little but still, and we know furthermore that a new regiment is to be delivered with the next ISV. Shawn has hacked its cargo manifesto. The longer time we waste, the more powerful they'll get, also they will then have time to come up with tricks we don't know about as for now. (He was right about that, a pandemic virus was under concoction in the RDA labs.)

As for now they have the northern plains in a grip of iron, they have spun a web of allegiance over the southern plains too and we have just begun to impinge on their hold on the archipelago out west. As long as they keep from making any huge forays into the forest it is hard for us to tackle them. After the debacle at the Onati Hometree and their disastrous defeat at the Swamp Hometree they have mostly stopped making forays into the forest unless in huge campaigns we mostly hide away from and evade, and take on them when some opportunity for it comes drifting by. They have rendered themselves less vulnerable to us."

Jeff turned at Tsailoni and thought aloud:

"We simply have to wait for a major attack we can ambush in the forest then. Or better – take some opportunity to pull them in. That means offering them something irresistible, like a 'defecting' clan sitting atop a big chunk of unobtanium ore."

Tsailoni gave a thoughtful comment:

"That irresistible lure could also be something else than grey stones. It could also be knowledge of the enemy – knowledge we could provide them with… By the way: How is our network of na'vi spies all over Namana Land, ready established? Able to plant 'information' useful to us?"

Neytiri worked in a way like the Na'vi head of intelligence in this war so the answer to this was up to her.

"There are of course holes in our 'network' but it is getting quite finely meshed. We do get useful information from it but trying to plant propaganda and false information is more risky. Our agents then run the risk of being pointed out as the one who said this and that."

If the Na'vi side of the conflict was in a quandary, brigadier Cox was no less so. Experience had shown that sending small expeditions into the forest simply was too dangerous to be contemplated, a scouting force of a full Na'vi clan kumpongu (war party) was needed. He would simply have to sit and wait for a new regiment in some months. And he could hope for what had been hinted at in the last meeting he had been at before he left from Earth, in the RDA HQ in Zug, Switzerland: There might be a virus available for him to unleash on the enemy, killing them off in droves and also rendering the allied clans desperately dependent on vaccines – giving RDA a powerful leverage to keep them digging for ore…

But that was still in the uncertain future. He could just hope for a message in his e-mail box arrived from RDA HQ through the "worm hole" through space time. He thought to himself: "So you better be patient, Nev!"

If brigadier Cox was just biding his time, there were others who saw a golden opportunity in the predicaments of RDAs operations at Pandora.

The current situation was that the human and their Na'vi allies held sway over the northern steppes and coastlands. But there were a steppe zone south of the forest too, far less broad than up north and with less ore deposit around so no permanent base had been established there. But in this liability there was a blessing, no human military force was around to irritate the southern Steppe clans.

The local agent, Marianne LeClerc, was French by background, she was born in the city of Clermont-Ferrand. The mightiest southern steppe clan was the Mau'txe, in a traditional and embittered enmity with the Eymastua at the edge of the forest. So the Mau'txe was the hard fist at the southern steppes but employed by a commercial company as she was, she had set up her office with the Trader clan, not a very big clan but a clan of acknowledged mastery of the intricacies of the art of barter trade. She often felt like a queen of a kingdom of her own. The political philosopher Karl Marx once wrote that a state's top functionaries can be divided in ministry of external plunder – in her case the Mau'txe clan which was the trump card among the southern warlike clans armed with firearms courtesy of RDA, the ministry of internal plunder – that was the Trader clan for her which was nerve center of her commercial business with gathering ore to be shipped up to Svarog, and the ministry of public works which in her case meant the Zo clan, local masters of healing which she had empowered even more with handing out medicines from the RDA laboratories.

Agent LeClerc had with considerable acumen built up a powerful RDA presence in the southern plains, for very little investment by the RDA head office at Svarog. Head of the station up there, Perry Henson, was often very, very benevolent in the reports about her he sent back to Earth. She was ambitious too, aside from her commercial empire south of the jungle she had another ace card up her sleeve in the fight against the Na'vi side: Her own little espionage network…

Laura Di Raffaeli, aka. Feofa te Nenokxi Eymaneo'ite, was an accomplished spy of the "Mata Hari" variety. Agent LeClerc had asked the intelligence leader at Svarog Concetta Reveteri for an able agent for sniffing out clans with an interest in commerce with "grey rocks" and had been assigned her. And Laura showed to be very able, she not only recruited the Nenokxi clan to the Ocean Federation, she even infiltrated and turned over the hostile end-of-forest Memekx clan, living in a "bay of grass in the jungle mainland". She established a wide network of informers in various clans so she knew well when some forest clans were making ready for a foray out at the steppes, rendering the steppe clans all the more grateful for their "magical" power of always knowing beforehand when it was time to mobilize the clan fighting forces. Turning the Memekx clan to neutrality and then (apparent!) friendliness wasn't any big deal but the big clan up north beyond the neighbouring Nemengli forest clan beckoned and that clan was big game indeed – the Omatikaya… Infiltrating THAT clan and undermining its fighting ardor would be one huge plus mark in her resume… That prospect was one mightily tempting tickle to her professional ego as spy… Her contact agent LeClerc wasn't averse to it either, participating in arranging such a coup would look extraordinarily good in her resume too – she might be able to really put a torpedo into the Na'vi resistance, something brigadier Cox up north had never been able to do, no matter how much human martial power he had invested in it.

However, if there was one thing Laura or Feofa was certainly not it would be a sloppy amateur who didn't do her homework beforehand. More than once careful contingency planning had saved her blue avatar skin from dismal failure and capture. She acquired a powerful radio set for transmitting messages to intelligence HQ at Svarog and put it up at her own home station together with agent LeClerc, with copies for agent LeClerc too. Presenting herself as an itinerant trader from the Trader clan was a good cover for coming and going, belonging to a clan that was hostile shouldn't be too much of a trouble, reports she had heard from other traders indicated that the Omatikayas and their allies were very interested in firearms to replenish their stores expended in skirmishes against the RDA forces – it would be simple for her to present herself as peddling loot stolen from RDA arsenals, some ammunition clips offered for sale should grant her access to the clan.

Then next step: Information search. One problem the RDA commanders had was that the precise current organizational structure of the Na'vi was a mystery. All right, the grand picture was clear: Basically a confederacy with Jake Sully as leader with advisers drawn from the clans in various affairs, the members of the former avatar team had been made members of various clans around, mostly the Omatikaya but not exclusively. But the finer details were unknown, such as who manned the various tasks in the leadership, the abilities and weaknesses of those people, the martial powers of the various clans etc. What was known before the war of such details of organizational patterns was probably irrelevant now, they had most probably been reorganized soon as the big war broke out.

She decided to find some point of entry into the clan. Romancing the born Na'vi would be hard, they were brought up to ignore romantic advances until it was clear that it was meant for a brain-to-brain connection and then lifelong faithful monogamy. That was too dangerous to enter in since it meant opening a door into the very innermost of her knowledge, memories and emotions, she had been strictly warned against this. But engaging in all-girls chit-chat was on the other hand not out of the question… and that could be more than enough informative.

She looked up the biographical entries in the RDA database of employees about the members of the avatar team. Best sources would be either calm and lonely types with narrow horizons, longing for someone just to keep them company, or vivacious types who could be approached with histrionics or romantics as suited.

She suddenly noticed something in the records – the psychologist of the team, Nicholas P. Dixon was noted as an incorrigible womanizer. Promising – she had never yet met a man with that weakness unable to resist her overtures… Reading further she noticed another promising lead, the seamstress and laundry manager of old "Hell's Gate", Penny Magennis was noted as a modest, unassuming, homely young spinster with a liking for garment care and making. Sounded as one who could be approached with a little female "small talk"… She could bring some products from southern tanneries – the Nenokxi clan was known for its craftsmen in the craft of tanning – so she would have occasion to get into contact with her. Melanie Foster, limnologist, might be useful to contact too, however rather more risky since she was noted as on the one hand a dull, eminently unglamorous and rather socially isolated by nature but upright in ethics and very devoted to her science, life in fresh water. Either of them, all of them best of all of course, might be useful sources.

And she planned a get-away plan with care – she picked a direhorse mare with good carrying training but also able at galloping fast. She loaded it with a carrying harness which easily could be unplugged and dropped so she could run for it into the forest very quickly if needed. And she appointed Mekoki, a young man of the Trader clan, as her trading assistant, medicines provided by agent LeClerc had once saved his mother so his loyalty was rock bottom. She had agreed with him a distress signal, "dancing man", hearing this he was at once to abandon the cargo and ride to the Mau'txe to raise a rescuing warrior party if she couldn't wiggle out of the situation on her own. So now, harness baskets full with finely tanned leather hides, sweets Na'vi style for the kids, river mussels for food and some ammunition clips – and a radio set hidden in a basket, she went out on her trading excursion. The walkie talkie she brought along was small to be easily hidden so its range didn't reach far, on the other hand she had on beforehand hidden repeaters high up in uninhabited trees on the way to the Omatikayas.

The call sounded in New Hometree: "A trader is coming!"

Life in New Hometree wasn't bustling these days, most had taken refuge in various smaller localities in the vicinity. Only a few watchkeepers were present, some twenty or thirty scouts at any time. When now this trader was observed the message went out to the crafts' leaders of the Omatikayas to come to inspect the merchandize. The craftsmen and –women came and took a look at it and recognized it as good. The warrior kumpongu eyktan was a wee bit sceptic – how had she come by this ammunition she intended to sell? Stolen from a plundered arsenal, was the answer. Well, OK.

"And now You must allow us to demonstrate our hospitality. The jungle is dangerous by night so please stay with us over the night and share in our meal!"

Laura or Feofa took a look for her marks, she couldn't see anyone who could be Nick among healers or Melanie among gatherers but she took a look among the weavers too, knowing the interest of Penny in garment she would probably be in this gang inspecting what she had for sale. And – there she walked, dressed in loincloth and with only the skimpiest cover over her breast but still recognizably her, she evidently was among the assistants of the weaving eyktan.

When food was ready she sat down with her by the firepit. It wasn't hard to get into a chit-chat with her. How life was going nowadays? Not too bad, even her mate Brad had finally come to terms with the constraints of village life. A bell instantly started ringing in the head of Laura – Brad Fuller was noted in the database as a notorious freak and the head of a three-piece harem none of whom was Penny, he was described as a type not fitting easily into any society anywhere. She made a note in her mental notebook, this was surely something to record in the database at the head office of intelligence at Svarog!

Not long after daybreak she left and returned, at a stopover she took her walkie talkie and gave report. The report made its way through relays to the main radio set at Trader clan's hometree, and from there up to donna Reveteri's office at Svarog.

In time "Feofa" came back with more merchandize for sale, more than once too, again and again she met with little, naïve Penny and pumped her for what she knew, she was a veritable gold mine! She readily revealed where her "away" tree was in the jungle and she knew where the gatherer's tree was too but nothing more. She could explain a good deal of the inner workings of the Na'vi federation too and all was reported to donna Reveteri…

There was, however, a limit to how much knowledge could be hauled out of Penny, she was a weaver on the bottom-most hierarchical level. Laura had found out that Melanie was well above her in rank as a "good gatherer" in charge of the fishing team of the gatherers, the inlander clan Omatikaya didn't live close by any extensive lake or river so didn't have any fishing team numerous enough to be assigned a crafts group of its own. Too big risk to contact her compared with what information she could be "milked for". Nick, on the other hand, should be both simpler and more informative. Penny had said that he nowadays was teacher, "karyu", in psychology and psychiatry at the Central Forest tribe's school of healing. That was far above Penny's level, appreciably above Melanie too, and as a notorious Casanova he shouldn't be hard to catch. So Laura started bringing psychoactive medicines in her merchandize, in the hope that he would be attracted. And one day he showed up.

The talk about the potions and their beneficial and less than beneficial side effects went on between "Feofa" and Nick. She proposed that they could go to a secluded area of New Hometree where they would be less disturbed. Afterwards Nick could sense a certain amorous tone in the voice of this trader Feofa. Hmmm – didn't she blink her eye just now? Then she became clingy too and a warning light started blinking in the head of Nick, he had received a strict warning from Norm, together with a very nerve-wrecking act Norm had authored and performed – he remembered very vividly its effects still – about the risks of unfaithfulness among the Na'vi. When she came to the giggly level and wanted to stroll hand in hand with him, the yellow blinking light turned blindingly and steadily red. So he took her for a walk towards the forest – past the four warriors keeping watch over the New Hometree… Close by now…

"Grab this trader! She is a suspect one! May be a spy!"

Suddenly five pairs of arms took hold on Laura. She put up a mighty struggle and she screamed the alarm signal "dancing man" to Mekoki. He rose immediately, cut loose his mount and galloped into the forest. She herself was bundled up and put at a direhorse. Into the forest she was taken, over hill and vale she rode until she came to a thicket. There they brought her down from the steed and a branch hiding an entrance was pushed away.

In the semi-darkness inside there she could discern numerous Na'vi with yellow sashes and belts, all of them looking at her in undisguised hostility. Some of them she could recognize, such as the avatar bodies of the square-jawed Geoffrey Enright and the lanky Norman Spellman, or the red robed Mo'at with her special hairdo and equally red-robed Neytiri however with her hair in the customary long braid, marking her as shaman to become but not yet. And finally a black-caped male entered, with the five avatar fingers he couldn't be anyone else than Jake Sully himself. He said it very laconic:

"Mo'at, taste her! Neytiri, _tsahaylu_!"

Laura was kicked at the back of her knees so she fell down kneeling. And then she felt something sharp strike her in her shoulder and she heard that authoritative female voice saying:

"Not a personally bad person but still very dangerous having at large!"

Then she could feel how her _tswin_, her braid that is, was grabbed and connected with another one. It felt like a bathtub in her head suddenly was unplugged, she could see how many memories, knowledges and observations went down the drain. Not so that they were forgotten but they became known to Neytiri who drew them out of her. In the end the_ tsahaylu _link was unconnected.

"She has been chatting a lot with Penny and found out about whatever she knew about or systems. They know for instance where in the forest the 'away trees' of the weavers and gatherers are."

"In so case the Omatikaya gatherers and weavers must at once relocate to another away tree. Send them a message – on the double! There may be enemies on the way! Are there any warrior teams available to defend those 'away trees'?"

Jeff was serious in his voice now. "Sorry, no more than a skeleton crew guarding New Hometree, most teams are playing hide and seek with an RDA company at Big River. And I don't think that any other nearby clan will be able to come to our assistance this fast either."

Jake became frenzied now. "Then it will be all the more important to get those civilians into safety and to get those ay'kumpongu back from Big River at once. There are far more important targets nearby now, playing our cards correctly it is still possible to turn this disaster into victory."

Actually, it was almost too late already. Mekoki had alarmed the Mau'txe who mobilized a kumpongu and took two other prairie clans along with them too. Some two hundred warriors were now riding, and a dozen in the air, towards the most southerly known "away tree", the gatherer's. They intended to capture hostages they then could exchange for Feofa. Some twenty of them set the course for the gatherer's away tree, equally many continued on to the weaver's tree and the rest kept back in reserve.

Ma'tilta te Povitxens Pxerta'ite (i.e. Mathilda from Providence RI, USA and daughter of Bertha M. Cummings) was one of the additional "dreamwalkers" who had arrived at Pandora after the Great Battle. In her human body she had been an abominably overweight woman of very limited social skills and coming from an upper class background, making her an outcast in the social environment at Earth – her brilliant academic achievements couldn't remedy that. Jake had succeeded with making her reform her ways by connecting her _tswin_ with a branch from the Tree of Spirits, bringing her into direct contact with Eywa and also with the deceased ma'am Grace Augustine. She understood things she never before in her life had…

Nowadays she was a reasonably well adjusted gatherer of not too bad physique and looks and of all right social standing too, furthermore she was a satisfied mate of Am'tey and mother of two years old Tanya – named after her beloved grandmother at Earth. Right now she was sorting the various herbs she had gathered for seasoning the dinner for tonight…

PIIIP!

The whistling sound the messenger blew with his whistle rang shrill. He called out even before his _ikran_ (banshee) had touched ground:

"Get all out of here! On the double! Enemies will soon be coming – here! Run to the warrior's away tree!"

Pure pandemonium broke out. Mothers ran for their kids, fathers reached for their weaponry and Ma'tilta was very happy that little Tanya right now was with her mother in law over at the storytellers' away tree. Her daughter not at risk, she joined fathers intending to cover the fleeing females and their kids… They could clearly see a swarm of hostile ikran-riders up in the air but there was no use in firing at them, they were far too fast moving.

Then hooves thumping the ground sounded. Ma'tilta looked back – still a few mothers striving to collect their kids to get away, we can't evacuate yet!

Then the Mau'txe riders arrived, some twenty of them, a prominent among them called out:

"We don't intend to hurt anyone, we just want to have one of our own released in return for you, Feofa te Nenokxi Eyma…"

Suddenly three arrows were planted in his rib cage, one of them fired by Ma'tilta.

A call went out:

"All gone now, now out of here!"

Ma'tilta had just loosened another arrow, again finding its mark. But now the order had been given, no use in risking anything more, better turn and try to get away to fight more another day… She turned and ran – but suddenly she felt a big thump in her back and then a searing pain… Her feet failed her and she fell to the ground and… felt suddenly so very heavy… hard to draw breath… oh my Am'tey!... Tanyaaa!... gasp… And she lost consciousness.

Shortly after she opened her eyes again and rose to her knees – and beheld ma'am Augustine again, she had seen her when she first time connected with the Tree of Spirits and in the limbo between her human and na'vi lives, and behind her the tallest Na'vi woman she had ever seen, with so many and so tight glittering skin spots that she looked like shining. That Na'vi said with the voice of an elderly, wise woman Ma'tilta had heard once before:

"Welcome to the afterlife, Matilda! You have made yourself deserve a name among the hallowed ancestors, Tanya will grow up to be the ancestor female of a big and proud family, keeping your name alive for many a lifetime, someone to be proud of being the descendant of!"

"You are… Eywa? And You are Grace Augustine? I am in other words dead now?"

Grace replied: "Yes you are dead but don't be sorry, Tanya is in good hands, she has a loving father and a no less loving grandmother, one day she will have many respectful step-mothers. You will be able to follow them all for as long as You care. And I am Grace and I am Eywa and I am Tsu'tey and I am Eytukan and…, it matters little in this land. Rise Ma'tilta, You are to become one of the mass of proud ancestors too!"

Ma'tilta rose and looked at Grace but it was Eywa she saw. A look at the other standing there and she beheld the one she had once seen in the mirror as the astoundingly fat Mathilda S. Cummings. She grabbed a lock of hair and found it red and curly, and she wore a white lab coat… She turned towards Eywa again but saw Grace. Now lifting her arm she saw that it was peppered with zillions of small, blinking spots now.

"Now You see Ma'tilta? You are part of the community now!"

Four of the some twenty defenders didn't get away but were struck down by the Mau'txe arrows, including a female one, only the leader Tutum'o and the warrior Leotx fell of their own. But the attack couldn't be called a success still even if the enemy had lost more, they hadn't captured any of the enemies they could use for ransoming Feofa.

The next in command warrior Meo'au who took over after the fall of Tutum'o gave orders now. His warriors searched the whole tree for gatherers trying to hide up in the tree but they couldn't find anyone, the gatherers had escaped all of them. He assembled his warriors and commanded:

"Now we ride to our other possible target, the weaver's away tree, the warrior party going there may have managed to capture some hostages there."

But then the totally unexpected happened. A young girl at ten years or so of age came walking out of the forest to the warriors who were making ready to mount their ay'ikran and fa'li again. And he said with her childish voice but using quite adult words:

"I am Kyntia (named for her human grandmother Cynthia…) and I have been ordered to announce to You, honored warriors, that You are surrounded by three full olo'kumpongu of battle-hardened élite warriors, three hands of them ikran mounted and with guns trained on You. And Yeff, grand kumpongu eyktan of the Namana Land and my daddy, is at the command of this surrounding force! You don't stand any chance to escape so to save your lives there is but one option open for you: Surrender."

The child turned towards the forest and called out: "Did I say this correctly now, daddy?" The warrior gang understood that Yeff had sent his own daughter to present them the demand for surrender, utilizing the traditional Na'vi respect for children. And an arrow whizzed out of the forest and got stuck in the tree trunk, to underline this demand.

The Mau'txe warriors dropped their bows and spears and sat down on the ground in surrender. They were explained the whole story about what had really happened at Old Hometree, how insignificant the difference between Old and New RDA actually was and all such. Afterwards they contacted the rest of the war party and convinced them too about the same. Long live the power of peaceful convincement over martial and lethal force!

Later in the day Jake came to assess the success story himself. Three males and Ma'tilta were found dead with arrows in their backs, Jake ordered them taken away to be buried with heroic warrior's honors tomorrow. Then he sat down with Jeff.

"This battle has so far been a tolerable success in itself, they frittered away their chance for retreating with searching the away tree for someone to take hostage. But now we can take this victory and turn it into a decisive one. How about this plan Jeff…"

The day after the remaining warriors on ground and in air came back to the Mau'txe Home thicket. They brought two females along with them, one of them wearing a brown belt, both of them looked like important Federation people. Olo'eyktan Nutxa'mey was satisfied, now he would be able to ransom Feofa. The two apparent captives walked up to him and faced him, in the view of the warriors.

"Olo'eyktan Nutxa'mey te Mau'txe Tsu'tey'itan, I am Trutxy'tsakon te Maiami Alfons'ite and this is Naraporn te Tsiang'may Naraithaksin'ite. We commend ourselves to Your hospitality and we ask to bring You a message from the Namana Federation. For You to be totally sure that we are not only speaking truth but very earnestly so too, we request that Your tsahik inspects us. Here is my shoulder for her to prick and my tswin to connect with, likewise Naraporn is offering her shoulder and tswin."

Tsahik Kukuto was rather taken aback by the request – who was this person offering to lay bare all her innermost secrets for her to see? But she did prick them both, having tasted their blood she declared: "Honest and earnest females both of them. To be trusted." And then she connected _tsahaylu_ with both of them, Trudy first and then Naraporn.

After the inspection session she looked frightened, all skin spots totally dimmed down, equivalent to pale as a carcass at Earth. She turned towards her mate the olo'eyktan:

"Nutxa'mey, seems that the rumor about how the tawtute vandalized and brutalized that you were convinced by that tawtute female was just a lie – it still wasn't! We are currently serving someone who would gladly burn down the Tree of Voices given the least chance to get away with it! Who in the ultimate end would be not dissatisfied with seeing all of us dead! (Her eyes became stiff and angry.) Nutxa'mey, we simply can't go on serving them! They just have to be sent away and without delay! And we must assist the Omatikayas with sending them away from all of this world too!"

Trudy and Naraporn looked at each other and understood that Jake's ruse of smuggling in the truth through an apparent surrender had succeeded. Ma'tilta and the three males had not given their lives in vain! The warriors had been in on the ruse all along, playing their part with artful acting.

The day after a polite Mau'txe messenger came to agent Marianne LeClerc and informed her that the clan now had transferred its loyalty back to the Namana Federation. She was asked to please be good to always from now on keep away from the Mau'txe clan's territory… Later the same day she had similar declarations from other clans at the southern prairies too. In the end, expelled from the last of the southern prairie clan supporting her, she had no alternative but to call for a bail out from a Valkyrie space ferry.

Her trading kingdom had ended its success story with a sudden and ignominious failure, thanks in no small part to a former avatar of not so bad ethics as had been believed and some brave defenders of the gatherer's away tree, some of them falling in heroic defense of their clan. Laura Di Raffaeli alias Feofa had acted as the irresistible lure to pull them into the forest, making for the defeat needed to win them over, that Tsailoni had been wishing for. The always loyal Ikran clan could now return to its home ground at the southern headland of Namana Land.

Agent LeClerc had never had any avatar body, she later on had to be satisfied with a boring desk job there and never again put her feet at Pandora. She found herself a husband at the Svarog station, making a reasonably happy couple with her Vincent Faveaux.

Laura Di Raffaeli lived on as prisoner of war until the end of the conflict and was then sent up to Svarog along with the other prisoners-of-war, living there for thirteen years after. When Naraporn came back to the Alpha Centauri solar system after having given evidence at the trial of the leadership of New RDA and having witnessed the formal liquidation of the company, Laura was together with the other former avatar agents of New RDA presented with Jakesully's offer, in his capacity as head of the Namana Federation, to return to Pandora to live a life among the technologically primitive Na'vi she had been genetically more adapted to since she left behind her human skin at Earth, also a life she had been living down there for a happy time before. She eagerly accepted the offer, left her Laura identity behind at Svarog and settled as Feofa with the – yes indeed, the Mau'txe clan…


	4. Northern Ruse

**Northern Ruse**

Clarabel Tomlinson was one of the original avatars, she had been the astronomer at Hell's Gate and after the eviction of the RDA company the secretary and office assistant of Owen MacGregor, administration clerk of the Augustine Research Station. When the station was abandoned she joined sea warriors and became the navigation expert of Derek Lester Gill, grand fishing eyktan of the and the "admiral of the Na'vi navy". His special affair was advanced fishing stock management, her was reading positions and setting courses with help from the skies. She however wasn't named srung pirogue eyktan, "vice admiral", for political reasons that had to be a na'vi. So until a good candidate for the job showed up, Deke let the job be vacant.

One navigational tool "Bella" soon learned to do without was the compass. The unobtanium mineral had very strong magnetic properties, all the strong magnets around made an instrument relying on geomagnetism useless. But Pandora did have a geomagnetic force field, a strong one too, if not overwhelming all the local mineral deposits. The outcropping of mineral at the Iknimaya Mountains was a freak of nature, the similar outcropping at the geomagnetic north pole was less of a coincidence and much larger. She had never been there but she had studied satellite images of the area. A similar image of the geomagnetic south pole had shown something of the same kind there, the geomagnetic south pole was in open sea but there was some skerries floating in the air above the water there.

The geomagnetic poles were the areas where the geomagnetism of Pandora was at its strongest, she knew. When going up north at Namana Land she had seen northern lights, low in the horizon but even at that southern latitude, meaning that above Northern Land the northern lights had to be much stronger. She did calculations and her eyes became big with astonishment when her computations were ready. The numbers her computations gave meant that the geomagnetic force field was so strong that alpha particles from cosmic radiation were drawn right down to ground level in a tiny zone around the geomagnetic north pole. Bombarding materials in the ground with this alpha particle radiation would produce other isotopes too, also with radioactive properties, the ground itself should become radioactive. Ozone production in the atmosphere at ground level would be so strong that it would stink in the noses… This corrosive gas would even ravage the exopack sets and air scrubbers in habitation modules…

This rain of cosmic radiation would be strong all the time but at its strongest during the night, when background radiation would be supplemented by the radioactivity captured by the geomagnetic force of Pandora and drawn down. And she worked out a table showing during which nights the radiation would be peaking, it depended on how the stars and other celestial bodies of this solar system arranged themselves.

This discovery explained why a good chunk of Northern Land was uninhabited, it was uninhabitable even to na'vi, not to speak about humans with less tolerance for radiation. She showed these results to Shawn O'Leary, the geophysicist now working as "computer wizard" and technician at the na'vi propaganda broadcasting station, and he was as astonished as her to see her results. "No wonder we sometimes have lots of noise from cosmic interference up north!" he said.

Yes humans. Jake had after a almost a year of guerrilla war in the jungle at Namana Land managed to put the RDA forces to a virtual stalemate, while the RDA were apparently loosing ground in the islands out west. But the struggle had been a bloody one. Somebody had to come up with some ploy to make this tragedy shorter, she thought to herself.

Suddenly the idea struck her – very strong cosmic radiation in this area, plus an atmosphere even more poisonous that most other areas of Pandora – humans with little tolerance to this… Her idea might be rather evil but if it could weaken human presence at Pandora then after all why not. She went to Neytiri, who Jake had named head of secret services against the humans, and presented her idea in details. She had the same reservations as "Bella", this plan was cruel to put it delicately... But this was war and, as the saying goes, everything goes in love and war. A scout was picked for the task, explained what to do and the risks there was to his mission, he was drilled in English language and Northern Land customs – their habitual garment, their no-nonsense and matter-of-fact speaking, and their traditional avoidance of the area around the rocks floating in the air – now they knew why.

* * *

Dushan Shishmanovich was resident mining engineer at Northern Land. He was under standing order from Perry Henson, mining director in the Alpha Centaury solar system, always to try to increase the unobtanium ore output. The pits in the Kozto clan's land gave good output but order had been so given, anyhow. So he was all ears when a na'vi in the common garment of the Northerners one day knocked at his doors and upon allowed into his office, gave him interesting informations.

"I am Tomeyti, a hunter from the Teteu'uz clan, northern neighbours of the Ice Hunter clan. I have heard that you take an interest in digging out much more of those grey rocks you ask us to dig for you. I can point out to you an area of huge blocks of grey rocks floating in the air, you may have heard about the Hallelujah Mountains at Namana Land, I can tell you that this area is full of blocks – even more and even larger mountains floating in the air, chock full of grey stone! And there are nobody living in the area you need to be afraid of disturbing. This region is called Keruseymaya."

Tomeyti fervently hoped that this tawtute man wouldn't ask himself precisely why nobody was living in this area… But he felt that this tawtute came close to it, he revealed that he understood at least some Na'vi by asking: "Dead rocks? Why this name?"

Tomeyti answered truthfully – however not all the truth: "For some reason the area is barren. No vegetation, no wildlife in the area. No food for catching means no way of living there for us. But it might be interesting to you who take an interest in grey rocks…"

Having baited his hook Tomeyti left the office. On his way out he was seen by Ngizino, olo'eyktan of the Ice Hunter clan. "Who was that guy I saw walking out?" he asked.

"Tomeyti te Teteu'uz. He told me about a huge motherlode of ore in the area named Keruseymaya. It might be useful to check out so I'll send a geologist party to investigate one of the coming days."

"You should realize what that location name means: 'Dead Rocks'."

Dushan nodded and smiled knowingly.

"Oh so you know that already? Then I should also tell you why the area has been so named. So I hereby warn you that we Northerners have a traditional taboo on entering the area, it is strictly forbidden to come closer to the area than first glimpse in the far distance of those rocks floating in the sky. It is said that those who violate the taboo will be cursed with a serious disease."

"What sort of disease?"

"I never saw anyone struck by it, the taboo is respected by everyone you see, but they say that the trespassers get weak and often get headache, nausea and vomits, then they may sometimes survive but they hardly ever have kids afterwards, they often get very depressed and express how rueful they are for breaking the taboo. The more serious cases get burns in the skin and coughing, and they loose all hair on their bodies – even the tswin (hair queue) become naked. The most serious cases are incurable and lethal. Even those who survive the disease at first will often succumb to some else serious disease a few years later. I find it very remarkable that any Northerner would even think about proposing to you that you go even close to this area!"

Tomeyti was meanwhile standing with his ear to the outer wall, listening. "Let's hope that he won't understand which disease Ngizino is talking about!" he thought to himself. Then he saw that people at the mining site was starting to notice his eavesdropping by the wall to the office. "I have done what I am able to, I better get away before someone start to inquire about me…" He "went to sleep", waiting for an opportunity for more active duty.

Tomeyti was right about manager Shishmanovich not understanding which disease he courted. Dushan mentioned his idea of a visit at Kerusaymaya to Tutxo, olo'eyktan of the Teteu'uz clan, Tutxo doffed his head and became thoughtful in his eyes. "Tomeyti? Can't say I have heard the name before… And are you quite serious about going to Keruseymaya of all places? Are you quite in your right mind? Haven't Ngizino warned you about that? I won't allow any of my clan to follow you in there and I can't imagine that any other northern olo'eyktan will either."

Dushan took in all the insisting tips about staying clear of the area around the geomagnetic pole. He had a chat with a mining foreman and a geologist. "I have had tips telling me that the floating rock at the geomagnetic north pole is a hefty motherlode of ore, even better than the Hallelujah Mountains down in the jungle. Your comments?"

Ogbuwy Jenkins, the big and muscular geologist of partly African heritage, gave his comment: "I can understand that, the geomagnetism attract this magnetic rock like a – yes like a magnet."

"But the chieftains seem to be unanimous in declaring this area off limits even though it is totally devoid of any settlement, any vegetation or any wildlife. They say that those who violate this ban are likely to be struck by a serious disease. Sounds like some sort of Pandoran malaria to me. What do you think?"

The mining foreman, didn't see that as a problem. "Taking proper precautions – i.e. staying indoors during nights, observing strict hygiena, monitoring vital statistics like blood pressure, blood samples and stamina – should keep that problem at bay. We can bring in a mobile lodging by helicopter, complete with sanitary amenities and a good stock of food, for the exploring team. That should handle the problem."

* * *

So four days later a big dragon helicopter hauled the exploration team of five into the area. Teteu'uz clanspeople on the ground shook their heads in disbelief when they saw the helicopters on a course due north with the habitation module suspended below its belly. Tomeyiti checked the calendar he had brought along and found that tomorrow would be a day of very strong sunshine of that variant the humans were even more vulnerable to than most na'vi. The trap was set.

The helicopter cruised around above the floating mountains for a while, looking for some place to alight. Finally they found a large rock with a suitably flat top and landed. The team quickly disembarked and set out to rig the module ready for living in for some days, the pilot Rex Lennier took a stroll outside to straighten out his muscles too.

It really was an eerie environment up at the top of the floating mountain. Windy and rather cold, even given the Northern Land climate which was much like England or northern Germany at Earth. No animals chirping, no plants rustling in the wind, no green in sight anywhere – only grey stone as far as the eye could see. Jenkins, head geologist of the team, asked his cook–cum–nurse: "Can you sense that funny smell in the air, I can feel it straight through my exo-pack?"

One of the geologists walked to an outcrop, hacked a stone fragment loose and studied it with his magnifying glass. "Very fine ore, out of what I can see. Looks like Shishmanovich' source was right, this really looks like a huge motherload of unobtanium ore. We better give it a study the next days."

Jenkins turned to the pilot and said: "Well, the voyage here has been long and arduous, so we now walk into our lodging to settle in. We'll be in contact, not by radio for the interference from the northern lights should be too powerful for that. Please call in with us in a week, then we'll have ready a report. You better start your voyage down to the main mining station at once, so that you are back before nightfall."

Rex took off soon after, from the air he could see the five geologists left at the station walk into the habitation module. He struck course south and landed just after the sundown of the Alpha sun. Walking in doors he reported to station manager Shishmanovich: "Mission accomplished. Exploration party landed and installed." "Well done, Rex. Go have a supper and a deserved downtime."

* * *

The day after started like most days for Rex, breakfast and then helicopter maintenance duty. Lunchtime. Hauling some loads of ore for shipment to the common loading ground. A light dinner. Scouting for big predators to frighten them away. But in the afternoon a funny feeling set in. He became so very exhausted and resting wouldn't do any more. He had no appetite when it was suppertime either. The morning after he woke early and with a splitting headache, so he walked over to the resident medic to report sick. The medic couldn't find any apparent cause but when he took a look at the blood sample he took he made big eyes – an abnormally low red blood body count. What on all of Pandora? This was so funny that Rex was taken up to the hospital at the moon of Svarog soon after. There they could after lengthy investigation tell that he had taken a powerful dose of radiation, it looked like the dose had not been so brutal that he shouldn't survive but he would be incapacitated for a long time to come. The doctor treating him sent this message down to head station at Northern Land.

Dushan read the report with astonishment. Rex had radiation disease like he had been in the zone struck by a small atomic bomb. How had he absorbed that dosage? Dushan went through his mission list, only one likely event stood out – his brief visit to Keruseymaya, he had been outside there for about an hour, helping Jenkins and his party with unloading stuff they would need. An hour of exposure had made him this ill? He had not eaten or touched anything with his bare hands while down there, according to his report.

And suddenly the chilling thought struck him: If an hour of presence at Keruseymaya had made Rex this ill, then what about Jenkins and his team?

Dushan rose abruptly from his table. He called up his backup pilot Ashley Cooper and asked her to take Big Dragon into Keruseymaya, latch her hook on to the habitation module from air without landing and then haul it out of there, back to main base at Northern Land. On the double and don't waste any time in there! And he made sure to tell her to bring a Geiger counter along.

Back at main base after the mission, pilot Cooper gave report. Nobody in sight at the site, she didn't waste time but did as she was told, she hooked the module up and then hurried back home with it. Afterwards she took a look at the Geiger counter and it very correctly showed a heavy radiation level. The doctor at the site opened the module and found five geologists in very serious condition, suffering not only from radiation injury but also from lung injury – the high level of ozone in the area had wrecked the air purifying system and poisonous Pandoran air had started to seep in. They were brought to hospital all of them but it was too late, they all died some days later. Out of what they said during their last days alive a timeline was made. They had awoke the day after arrival, set about working and collecting stones they brought in for analysis – but had fallen ill all of them, one by one, in the afternoon. And given the constant northern lights activity they couldn't radio for assistance either, so they had been lying sickening ever more until they were hauled out after five days at Keruseymaya.

And the day after their arrival back at main station pilot Cooper fell ill too – not nearly as severely as anyone else of them though, but…

* * *

Northern na'vi got to hear about the event and took it as a demonstrable case of Eywa's rage against the sawtute breaking the taboo on going to Keruseymaya. Tomeyti heard the rumour too and at once ran away, he mounted his ikran to get over to the northernmost island in the Western Islander federation, now fully aligned with Jake's Namana federation. He knew that manager Shishmanovitch would be besides himself with anger at him for fooling the exploration team into that death zone.

End of the story was that five hardly replaceable geologists were dead, one helicopter pilot was unfit for duty for quite some time to come and another one was incapacitated for some months to come too. The resident geophysicist at the headquarter at Svarog added salt to the burning wound on the self confidence of Dushan: "I could have told you about this if you had asked me! And what have you got to show for those five lives – about ten kilograms of very fine unobtanium ore!" But director Henson gave him solace: "It is evident that you ended up in this mess because you did your best with meeting my expectations. The whole affair is probably a ploy by Jake Sully and his drabants, to weaken our presence at Pandora a bit. You will not be sacked."

Rumour about the tragedy made it over to Namana Land too, how the Namana agent had enticed the witless sawtute into a killing zone. Tomeyti was lauded with a brown-tasseled helmet for his spy bravery and there was one for Bella too. Not a very big victory but a successful skirmish, some highly qualified tawtute put out of action for very little investment for the Namana side. Jake made sure to ask everyone struck with smart ideas like this to come to him with them, thus they could shorten the time of the tawtute a good deal.


	5. Some Old Acquaintances Best Forgotten

Author's note: Thanks to mr. "Just a Crazy-Man" for the inspiration that developed into this story…

_**Some Old Acquaintances Should Be Forgotten and Never Brought to Mind…**_

The guerrilla war in the Namana Land jungle had lasted for eight months and come to a military stalemate, while the position of the New RDA was visibly eroding in the archipelagos out west. The human tactical advantage with mobility through the air and crushing firepower was nullified by the Na'vi strategic advantage of ability in the nature and logistical independence of supply depots since their air power didn't need fuel but food and ability to make most of their ammunition themselves on the spot, the human intelligence advantage of eyes and ears in space was nullified by spies that had been avatars tracked down and then "turned". And the radio station team at the ruins of Augustine Research Station was a mighty intelligence advantage for Jakesully, they eavesdropped and decoded messages to and from field commanders and the RDA main station at the moon of Svarog.

One day Shawn at the radio station decoded a routine message. Reading like this:

"**Operation: Blue Thunderclap**

Operation manager: Captain Kenneth H. Atkins  
Task: Establishing a secondary base in an easily defended area  
Purpose: A base closer to the geographic centre of Namana Land would simplify quicker response to raider teams reporting trouble in the jungle than is possible from Amananga base. so that an ambush can be turned to an enemy defeat, to bind local clans tighter to our side and to function like a hub for mines we can establish around in the vicinity in central Namana Land.

Problems:  
Locality of choice:  
We have to demand these advantages from this locality:

- Easy defence. Island in a lake, hilltop, meander loop in a river etc. Open terrain is a must, ambushes from the jungle are dangerous.  
- Air supply. A region with sufficient open and even ground area for a landing a dropship from Space – a supply route from Amananga base through air is vulnerable to interception by enemy fliers.  
- Local sympathizers. If not in the area itself then at least clans in the vicinity that can be turned to our side with a show of force, and to man mines we intend to establish in those localities.

Ressource investment needed:  
To hold our position we have to establish a defence. What would be needed to defend it? In defence systems, helicopters, AMPs and soldier manpower, and added to it support from our allies.  
Operations planning meeting at 1300 hours at Monday 14th, meeting room at Amananga base."

"Jake had better see this!" Shawn thougt.

When Jake got to see the paper, he made huge eyes. "Could this really be… Good ole Kenny?"

"Kenny who?" asked Jeff sitting to his right.

"That captain in charge of this operation they are planning, he just might be the weapons sergeant of my company in Venezuela. A good man, a real encyclopedia on two feet about quirks of firearms technology. Would be a big pity if he is on the side of the enemy, he is a dude I could dearly well have needed on my side in this struggle…"

Jake sat and pondered and then spoke: "We better find out if it is really him. In so case it could be to our advantage, knowing him means that I'll be better able to forecast his likely battle plans for the battle it seems that we are heading for. Ask our spies in their HQ to look for a big and muscular captain with black hair and a long nose, and with a booming voice. May be we even can make him an offer he can't refuse…"

Some days later the report from the spy came in: "There really is a captain at the base fitting the name and the description, and he is known as a technology freak."

Jake was part eager and part disappointed in his voice: "It can't be anyone but him then!" Eager with may be having an opportunity to meet an old friend again, disappointed by having him as an enemy. Jeff looked at him and guessed his mood, he asked him with a sardonic little twang in it: "Hasn't the sadness of sometimes having to meet an old brother-in-arms as enemy always been the lot of a soldier? Come to terms with it, Jake!"

Monday evening Shawn came in with the meeting report, for Jake to read.

"**Operation: Blue Thunderclap  
Summary from Planning Meeting**

Operation manager: Captain Kenneth H. Atkins  
Main conclusion of the meeting: A prioritized list of advantageous location for a new base at Amananga Land, with arguments pro and con for each of them, and listed according to their preference ranking.

- Islet in Onati Lake.  
Pro - Good, open view around, making the isle easily defendable. Clans around are not unfavourable, a closer presence could turn them fully over to our side. Some mid-level rich ore is found not far away from it.  
Contra - This is a very small isle, it may not have enough open space for both living quarters and various defence buildings. We would have to build one landing pad out in the lake.

- Mountain Peak in the Mountains Range.  
Pro – Easily defendable area, with many locations favourable for defence lines, allowing for defence in depth. There is one roomy valley with ample space for a space shuttle landing pad. One valley has a small ore  
deposit and there are very many small deposits just below the range.  
Contra – Local clans are uniformly hostile.

- River bend in the Big River.  
Pro – Defence is good but a little hampered by dense forest on the other side of the river. Middle level rich ore deposits in the vicinity. Local clans are wavering but could probably be shored up with a heavier presence of  
New RDA forces.  
Contra – The forest isn't far away. The local clans are wavering and a heavier RDA presence could just as well push them away as draw them closer to us.

- Terra firma island in the Big Swamp marshlands.  
Pro – Roomy island, almost the size of the old "Hell's Gate" base. Clans are not inimical to New RDA. Terrain is very hard to manage through.  
Contra – The forest very close by is waterlogged but far from unpassable – for those with jungle ability. No mines at all in the vicinity.

The report conclusion went on about defence systems that would be needed, how to woo clans in the area and buildings needed in the base. Jake just skimmed through that and concentrated on the main point.

"They are likely headed either towards the Onati's or the Mountaineers' clan. They must be notified that they are likely to be attacked soon. And I need to consult Neytiri and Tran Thi Dung, Tran Thi Dung is our human propaganda expert, there might be some propaganda value to haul out of this threat."

Neytiri: "What could I say that is new about this situation? Every victory is working to push us one small step further towards victory."

Tran Thi Dung was more specific: "They are trying hard to regain the offensive clout, they are most probably feeling desperation coming creeping. If we keep on denying them this, they will soon grow battle weary. And Jake, given that you are a personal acquaintance of the commander of this campaign, we could give him a message meant just for him to heed, that we are aware of their plans and take our countermeasures to every plan they may have. That would be very bad to their fighting spirit."

"Wouldn't we then reveal our spying and hacking operations?"

"Why not, if that would work to undermine their fighting spirit? It isn't good for a soldier to know that the enemies have their eyes and ears on him, every step he takes. But we could add a little misleading clue in the news presentation."

Angie and Maeve set to work with composing a news show. A highlight was a plea meant for captain Atkins himself:

"We are now pleading with captain Kenneth Hannery Atkins not to go ahead with the attack at the Onati clan on the planning board. RDA has already lost a platoon there, why risk even more? This is the word of corporal Jake Anderson Sully to his old commander, former first sergeant Atkins USMC, firearms specialist. Understand that if You do, it will be at the risk of the lives of many good soldiers, including Your very own life! We know about this plan out of papers we found in the wreck of a helicopter we downed.

* * *

Brigadier Cox sat and watched a recording of the Angie's broadcast together with his intelligence manager, the studiously elegant captain Clive Pebblethwaite, or "Pebbles" for shorts.

"What do you make out of this, Pebbles? Funny what they do know, don't you think?"

"I agree and I simply refuse to believe that they have found out about Operation Blue Thunderclap from paper simply discovered in a 'copter cockpit. We never allow captains on hot operations to see or carry such papers. They must somehow be rummaging through our secret files. I can only imagine two ways."

A quick thought struck Cox' head. "Espionage?"

"Yes. Or hacking our computers through virtual links."

"But how can this be? None of our avatars are even close to archives where they can come over documents like these. And how could a stone age people manage to hack computers?"

"I think I have an idea and you just saw how, boss."

"I did?"

"That radio station they are broadcasting propaganda by may do something more than just sending out radio signals… They could intercept signals too, and if they have an able IT guy among the former avatars of Old RDA, they could hack our firewalls etc. in those communications satellites."

"Making that radio station more important than ever to silence. I'll have an operation planned for its elimination."

"How about putting up a trap for them before that, boss? Why not put a document in the database detailing a reform of Operation Blue Thunderclap? That hacker of their will find it and relay it to Sully and his folks, our satellite surveillance will then show us if they really are hoodwinked away from our real target. When the radio station thus has served its task of planting our disinformation and allowed us to deliver them another crushing defeat, we can go ahead with our plan to demolish that radio station."

Cox beamed: "Brilliant idea Pebbles! That is what we are to do!"

* * *

That evening Shawn hacked and then decoded captain Atkins' orders and brought the document to Jake.

"**Operation: Blue Thunderclap  
Summary from Planning Meeting**

Operation manager: Captain Kenneth H. Atkins, now promoted to major Kenneth H. Atkins.

Mobilization order: Batallion C is to make ready for conquest of Onati Islet. All soldiers are to bring relevant equipment for this expedition. The Staff company will join the invasion, including a Big Dragon to carry the Engineers' equipment. Field first aid station is to join in, together with staff personnel. Captain Wozniaki of the engineers is to immediately start planning the layout of the base, he can have a map of the islet at the Amananga base HQ."

Jake yelled: "That is it! They are headed for the Onati Islet! We must make preparations for it at once!"

But the day after Jeff was starting to grow uneasy. "Jake, I just had a high priority report from our agent in Amananga base. He couldn't see them bringing any rubber dinghy or diving equipment they would need to establish a base at that small island in the lake, on the other hand they are bringing a lot of explosives, such as would be needed to blast rocks. Could it be that this document you saw yesterday is the bait in a trap? That they want to get us out of the way so that they can establish a strong foothold up in the mountains, where we would have big trouble with evicting them?"

"Hmmm, something to think carefully on."

"So why don't we put up a trap of our own? We know that they are monitoring the target area from Space, we could show them something they will think they recognize as a confirmation that we are taking the bait but actually it is something quite else?"

"In details, please!"

"We know that if they are going to the Mountains, they will be heading for the Even Ground Plain since they do need an open area for their space shuttle landing pad, then it follows that they will be coming up the Verdant Valley and then either through the Flushing Spring Gorge or over the Twin Mountains Ridge. So let's put a 'welcoming committee' in the crags and caves there and supply them with lots of rockets, to strike them down when they are coming. We put them off guard by having many a kumpongu converge in the Onati Land, as well as Mountaineer civilians we bring to security among the Onati – looking from Space like a Mountaineer kumpongu flying to Onati Lake… while the real kumpongu is lying hidden, waiting for them…"

"Great Jeff! See to this! It will be a battle for high stakes but we'll have the upper hand."

* * *

All the higher leadership – i.e. all the commissioned officers – were present in the briefing room at Amananga base that afternoon, listening to brigadier Cox.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our enemy Jake Sully has taken the bait we put him. Satellite photographs show that a big force is assembling around Onati Lake, because we've spread a rumour among them that this is where we are going to attack. But we are not, we are heading for a softer target, one that has been left open by enemy forces as revealed by the satellite. So it is going to be a quick and simple establishing expedition, later on there may be a battle where we are going to have the advantage like at the Battle at the Stone Covered Well. Now go and brief your crews and inspect all their equipment and gear, we are airborne at 600 hours tomorrow."

Mustering the soldiers was no trouble, inspecting their various equipment and gear went with a breeze and then the final briefing upped their spirit. Some Amananga warriors joined the force, mounted on ay'ikran. So after a fiery pep-talk by captain Atkins in the morning they took off, spirits whipped up to a frenzy. Very few of them expected anything but a walkover. One however who did not was the veteran from the Great Battle who had signed back on, sergeant Stanceanu. He vividly remembered how they had taken off with high spirits before the Great Battle too and had come limping back, finding the home base captured by a coup-de-etat. Ending up with a humiliating consignment back to Earth, where he had immediately signed up once again for a new expedition, simply for the money in it – he had a big family to care for... He Ever since been suspicious at handling the Na'vi problem with walkover ease. It had occasionally worked, like at the Battle at the Stone Covered Well, but not always. And now he had that ugly belly feeling once again…

* * *

Nukeran, olo'kumpongu eyktan of the Mountaineer clan, was covering under a rug in his cliffside crag in the slope above the Verdant Valley, at the crossroad where the enemy would either have to fly into the gorge or above them up to the ridge up there to get to the flatland over there. If they flew into the gorge they would be set upon not only with rockets but also tumbling stones, courtesy of the hunters of olo'taronyu eyktan Keykau'not. If they on the other hand took up to the ridge they would be passing right above him and his warriors, baring their vulnerable bottoms to them. Tense waiting and then he heard the buzzing sound of the ay'kunsip. He whistled his "ready!" signal and waved a banner to alert the hunters too. Rockets ready? He went through a last minute mental rehearsal on how he had been told at warrior school to handle those ay'kunsip: Wait until they had come well into the trap before springing it.

He saw the ay'kunsip passing by in the valley below him – oh Eywa how many they were! (A battalion worth – i.e. about twentyfour) And a big kumpongu of ikran flyers in the van, together with that colossal kunsip. Entering the gorge… He picked out the signal rocket with a green flame, cocking it for giving the action signal…

_**Now!**_

* * *

Major Atkins felt a bump at the cockpit of his Big Dragon, flying together with some Amananga ikran-riders in the van of the force. He looked out of the side window and saw big boulders raining down on his 'copters from above. … Red eleven was struck in the rotor… rising up to return to base – aborting the mission… On his other flank he saw that Red fourteen got in the same predicament… Atkins yelled into the mic that the other 'copters had to rise up to take on the attackers on the escarpments… and then he felt a crack and now the rotor on his own Big Dragon started buzzing in a new tone! His pilot yelled: "Got to abort the flight, we have taken a hit!"

Atkins could hear how the remaining rotors strained without gaining altitude, then the pilot yelled: "Can't carry this load any more! Gotta drop it!"

"Are you dropping all the engineers' hardware?" "It is the load or us that will need to go down… there. Now we can rise and turn back!"

Coming out from the gorge a horridly awesome sight met him. Rocket flames crisscrossed the air in the valley, many 'copters were already smoking and had turned tail out back where they had come from. He counted himself lucky to be sitting in a well armoured gunship, otherwise he would have been rather dead by now. He called out: "Mission abort – do you hear me air battalion – mission abort! Mission abort!"

Soon they were out of the valley and over the forest again but now the casualties started coming in. The Amananga allied air force dispersed, heading home.

"Blue thirteen can't stay airborne any more, we are bailing out! Send an evac mission for us to this loc… (static)"

"Ask them to climb those huge trees then." Atkins told them.

"Looks like we could be joining them down there!" said the pilot of his own Big Dragon. "The splintered rotor has cut now and the other right rotor has taken a beating too, it is running hot and I don't know for how much longer I can keep this gunship up in the air."

"Blue o-five needs to drop passengers and arms to stay airborne…"

"Green twenty four here – cracked hull, we have put on personal exopacks…"

"Red thirty one reports – malfunctioning tail rudder here, staying airborne but we are flying on the skin of our pants now…"

"Black sixty six pilot has asked all on board to pray to all divinities there are that the rotors will carry all of us all the way back to base…"

Then Atkins heard the pilot yelling: "Now take brace position major and the rest of you, this is going to be one rough landing!" Seconds later they skimmed through the foliage of the tree tops and then the gunship smashed against a tree trunk. The trunk snapped and the falling log bumped against the roof hull – CRACK! – beeping sound – atmosphere isolation broken! Everyone grabbed masks – the gunship tumbled down to the ground and finally came to a standstill.

The pilot took a view around and saw utter devastation in the cockpit. Looking down he saw that he was bleeding from his arm. One cockpit chair had been broken loose and fallen over major Atkins, he was obviously in pain and his leg had an awkward angle, evidently broken. Engineer captain Wozniaki had been flung out of his seat, a neck in that angle left no doubt that it was broken. Lieutnant Pekönen was struggling to get out of her seat, along with the engineer sergeants also in the gunship, she yelled: "Quickly now! Out of the plane at once! It could catch fire any second!"

Out they came, save for corporal Itakikeri, in the nick of time before the wreck caught fire. So there they sat, fourteen soldiers stranded in a world in every way imaginable hostile to them. Many of them were in obvious pain, all of them desperately hoped for a rescue mission. And it came – but not the one they had been hoping for…

Suddenly a Na'vi patrol mounted on direhorses came out of the forest and hands went to the air instantly. Those who could sit on the direhorses were put on them with hands bound behind their backs, Atkins and a couple others were put on stretchers harnessed to the horses. Off they rode, after some hours they arrived at a huge tree. Out of the mass of na'vi a VIP-looking male strode, Pekönen looked at his hand and saw five fingers – an avatar! She understood that it had to be Jake Sully himself. He called out to a female avatar coming out of the masses: "Give'em a checkup, Maxine. And give that officer over there a special care, he is an old friend of mine."

After some time the healer called Maxine rose and told Jake: "That officer is beyond rescue, his broken leg is the least of his problems. A torn lung and a crushed liver is worse, he has just hours left. But he is still conscious, barely, but he is soon going into shock and terminal. If you want to have some words with him then take your opportunity now."

Jack bowed down over the stretcher and said for everyone to hear: "Major Kenneth Hannery Atkins, former first sergeant USMC, now listen. It makes me very sad meeting you under these circumstances but my duties as ruler of the Namana Land federation counts for more than old comradeship. May I just wish you the best for your voyage soon to commence, brother-in-arms! May be we'll meet again in Valhalla, the soldier's paradise!"

Atkins managed to pronounce a meek reply: "Thank you, mr. Na'vi president! Some promotion for a marine corporal!" "Same good ole jolly Kenny, eh?" "Trying my best…" Ten minutes later his eyes closed, never again to open. He was given a Na'vi warrior's funeral, some of the POWs said some eulogies and sang a hymn over the grave.

* * *

The mood at Amananga base was depressed in the evening that day. The Battle in Verdant Valley had been a disastrous defeat and the news about it was made clearly known by the radio station people.

"Two 'copters utterly lost, including a Big Dragon. Eight 'copters succeeding with coming back with serious damage making them fit for their parts only, and five more with lesser damage putting them out of service until repairs has been done to them. And a whole lot of engineering equipment lost. Furthermore, forty five soldiers killed or captured, in any case lost to us, including major Atkins. Plus six allied fliers downed. Nine more soldiers in need of hospital care. Those losses are harder to replace than technical gadgets lost. And just to rub salt in the wound, those radio broadcasts made this clear for all of our personnel! We sure need to destroy that radio station and soon!" "Pebbles" could only second that.

The mood of the members of Jakesully's staff was a good deal more upbeat, to put it mildly… Two warriors killed and three injured in return for a major defeat, including thirty POWs surviving.

If the battle defeat had angered Cox, what took place a week later on top of it made him stutter in rage. New RDAs own information channel was jammed, an image of a grinning Jake Sully in his avatar shape overrode the broadcastings of the company itself. The disruption was counteracted very shortly after, the superimposed avatar face was only visible for a few minutes so the propaganda defeat was small but still easily felt, and now there could no longer be any doubt about the hacking abilities of the ham TV station staff. The planning of a raid to destroy the station went into high gear.

* * *

We now pass more than sixty years into the future. One of the soldiers keeping watch at the UN embassy at Pandora met with ambassador al-Bamaa.

"Miss ambassador, my grandfather was Kenneth H. Atkins, serving the RDA company at Pandora during the 2nd War. I wonder if I can be allowed to go visiting his grave?"

So at the Council Circle of the Namana Land Federation a young human woman stood. "Honoured council, my name is Veronica Atkins, my grandfather was killed in action during the 2nd War, he was Kenneth H. Atkins, Jakesully's own commander and friend during his years in the Jarhead clan. He left Earth to earn money – you probably understand a little what I mean to say about that, right? – to pay for a new house for his large family, one of them my dad Toby. My daddy was a mere toddler when he left and he had little to tell me about him. So now I apply for a right to go visiting the places where he lived here at Pandora, i.e. the ruins of the base near Amananga home tree, the location of the Battle in the Verdant Valley and his grave site. Can this application be granted? I'll accept any decision without grudge and I'll leave this Council Circle now to allow the members of this honoured council to deliberate in peace. I can come back to hear your decision tomorrow."

In time the decision came and it was positive, she was allowed to go for her private pilgrimage, with a storyteller as chaperone and guide. A wreath of flowers was put down at his grave.


	6. The War for the Isles

**A Mask Is Falling to the Ground  
**Reggie Calhoun was a trusted negotiator for the RDA Company. His task was to keep unobtanium ore ready for shipment by the Valkyrie space ferries coming down to Pandora from time to time, through purchase from the islander clans or by collecting from the mining teams at the islands, his station was with the clans in the sea west of Namana Land. Officially he had managed to evade capture when the Pandora-wide war broke out between the Na'vi and New RDA, he had been resident in the small west coast Sable clan when the war broke out but hearing the news he had at once stolen a canoe and rowed out to sea, and he had managed to find another agent who had found him another job. So his official heading was as follows: Reginald Powers Calhoun, permanently transferred avatar driver, for the time being employed as purchaser and hoarder of raw ore after his successful evasion of vengeant Na'vi at the outbreak of the war.

He had however another professional title, carefully hidden for New RDA agents and representatives otherwise: Na'vi spy. He had actually been captured by some warriors and taken to face that imposing avatar-looking Na'vi chieftain they called Jakesully. He had been given a stark choice:

"Zäntx te Nakxal Tsu'ru'itan, now listen carefully, I know that you are a human agent for the New RDA Company in an avatar body, by the name Reginald Powers Calhoun. The chances for success for New RDA are slim to put it lightly, guerrilla warfare is a very powerful strategy, very hard to overcome. I think you are aware of this, anyone who have read even the least of military history of Earth should be. Agents revealed will be in huge trouble when they are found at the successful end of it, and they will face a rather uncomfortable detention time until then. But… agents cooperating with us during the conflict will earn our gratitude and it will be possible for them to choose where to remain after the conflict… Should you however betray us after your oath of allegiance, a very dismal end will be in store for you! So Reggie, whose side are you on? Our or their?"

Reggie gave it a quick thought and its outcome was simple. He had joined the avatar program to escape from the hardscrabble life at Earth, and he had learned to feel comfortable in the lush forests and seas teeming with fish at Pandora. The choice wasn't hard. "I'm in. What will I have to do in return for being accepted?"

"Having taken our side we will demand a great oath of allegiance. You will then be our agent against RDA, probably out at the seas in this case. You will be able to evade our warriors out to apprehend you and paddle out to islands in the western sea under RDA control. What is to happen then will depend on the decisions of the RDA command.

In case A, they send you back at Namana Land as a spy here. You should then as soon as possible contact some olo'eyktan and you will then be our channel of feeding the RDA with disinformation, you could say that you will be our 'agent Garbo' **(Note from author: Check 'Agent Garbo' in Wikipedia and read an awesome success story of espionage)**.

In case B, they put you to work as a negotiator at those islands, to collect unobtanium ore. You may then each time the Alpha Centauri B star is rising before the A star be attempted contacted by our agent while you are sitting alone in the forest – make sure to do this whenever the B star is on the rise! If you never do so we'll start suspecting defection! Then you can send your reports to us in the Na'vi leadership by this agent, this agent will be some scout coming to you. You can identify this agent by his or her question: 'Are there enemy na'vi in this vicinity?' Then give the agent the reply that these people are only enemy of their enemies, to identify yourself too. Your codename will be 'Charcoal', your reliable sources enumerated with single letters and your less reliable sources with double letters. Give this visiting contact your information, preferably written, and it will be delivered to us in the Na'vi leaderhip. And this agent will give you our special orders, if there are any. I guess that like most RDA people you have a personal pocket TV set? If you then tune in to our broadcasts you will see some 'special announcements', these will orders to start some action specified in written orders you have been given, if they correspond with your given code announcement, otherwise you can regard them as the nonsense they will sound like. Well now, are you able to do us this service – it will be remembered if you do?"

He was then brought to the Tree of Souls and asked to swear his allegiance to the Na'vi on pain of death in the face of the tree. Then he was flown to the west coast and given a canoe, he put to sea in it. He paddled for a whole day until he saw land and crawled ashore.

**Undercover Agent**  
As soon as he had rested after his long paddling voyage, he walked to the local islander home tree and asked the olo'eytkan to put him into contact with some sky people. He soon after met a mining engineer who brought him to another island for presentation to the RDA regional head mining engineer Billie Mulrooney. She was overjoyed to have an agent available to handle the ore delivered from the local clans, when colonel Ronnie Pritchard asked him to go back to Namana Land as a spy among the clans at the mainland she put an immediate stop to those plans. Reggie thought to himself: "OK, so case B is what it will be."

He was put in charge of collecting ore from the Bokoyw islander clan territory. Most of the time he was lone agent at the island, he put together a report on the islanders' level of allegiance to the "Ocean Federation", their force and the absence of RDA mercenaries at the island, wrote it down in terse wordings and put the paper note into his hair.

Then in the evening he saw that tomorrow the B star would be rising first in the morning. So in the early morning he took some arrows and some points and went into the forest, the clansman who saw him was told that he had forgot to fix points on these arrows yesterday evening so he had to fix them now for the chase in the afternoon. As soon as he was out of sight of the village he sat down in the forest and started to work with the arrows.

After not so long time a scout came out of the forest, approached him and inquired: "You wouldn't know if there are some enemy Na'vi in these hereabouts, would you?" "The local villagers are peaceful people, they have their enemies but they are only enemies of those who declare themselves their enemies."

The scout then grinned and exclaimed: "Contact! I am agent 'Flute' and you are…" "I am agent 'Charcoal'. Here is my report of this island. On your way you go towards the mainland, deliver my report and my location! On the double!"

Reggie read the sheet the sheet. It read like this:

"Messages like this are to be read and remembered, destroy this carefully after having read it. Apart from general collection of trivial information like coming and going of troops and the inclination of local people, you are to keep on the permanent outlook for dreamwalker agents in this area, we know that there are some. Do not try to eliminate them on your own, rather report their whereabouts through your contact, then we will take them on opportunity. Special announcement meant for you: 'Together with a fish in …'. It means an order to move to the island named when you have an opportunity for it, without rousing the suspicion of the enemy that is. For sake of security – write in Na'vi and code it with a simple 'Caesar', that should do."

Jake could soon after add a new "mole" to his network of spies. After a while he and Neytiri, now in her function as intelligence and propaganda manager - with vietnamese Tran Thi Dung as councillor - could work out a reasonably good image over the RDA forces out at the islands and the level of allegiance of those clans. Since the guerrilla war at the mainland now was fairly stable, it was possible to invest some power in maritime operations, the Na'vi admiral Lester Gill was supplied with a map of where an invasion would be likely to gain a foothold, the Western Islander clan naturally gave itself out as a first target. It had a long history of contact with clans at Namana Land, it had taken part in the Great Battle.

Propaganda agents soon went there, spread the word about tawtute falsehood and promised support with throwing them at sea. So when a fleet of Namana warriors paddled ashore in the night, the clanspeople stood aside and let the mainlanders ambush the few soldiers at the islands. The success of the attack raised the ire of colonel Pritchard, the Mangrove island would be the natural next target. A whole company of RDA mercenaries was put there to defend the island and the olo'eyktan was asked to take up arms to defend their islands from interlopers from the mainland and he so promised. Colonel Pritchard believed in the loyality of Mangrove Islander olo'eyktan Robokx. Agent Enu'not, alias Gertrud Heldenhofer, warned Pritchard against taking his words at face value, he still did. Reggie knew better, he had talked with a Mangrove Islander fisher and knew that Robokx resented the presence of all those soldiers – by now the RDA mercenaries were regarded as the interlopers not the Namana mainlanders! And this he had reported to the messenger "Flute".

So when the invaders came in the night the islanders turned on the mercenaries. When colonel Pritchard tried to convince the clanspeople to resist the mainlanders in the early morning hours a knife was suddenly standing down behind his breastbone into his heart. Pritchard looked down in astonishment at the knife, made an insulted but wordless gaze at Robokx, drew a gasping last respiration – and died, as almost the single fatality of the attack. As soon as he lay on the ground the rest of the mercenary company took to their helicopters, and agent "Enu'not" fled to the Rock in the Sea clan where she was active agent until the end of the conflict.

When the top military commander, brigadier Neville Cox, got to know the demise of his subordinate Ronald Pritchard, he cursed his memory and took over command himself. He then started doing whatever he could to build a better relationship with other chieftains in the Ocean Federation. But the damage had been done. The villagers had seen how the mercenaries ran away as soon as their commander had been killed, and those who didn't know this were told so by propaganda agents of Jake running around.

**Patient Intelligence Work**  
With time, Jake had been able to build up a network of spies around, eight to the number. Agents "Charcoal", "Tar" and "Soot" in the Western Islands archipelago, "Ink" and "Asphalt" at Nongona Land west of the archipelago, "Abyss" at Gargoyle Fish Land, "Night" at the islands east of Gargoyle Fish Land and "Coke" at Northern Land. Each agent was served by a contact, "Flute", "Drum", "Trumpet", "Horn", "Bell", "Fiddle", "Oboe" and "Trombone", respectively. Also available, two of them after some time after being captured by "contra-espionage teams", were the double agents "Bola", "Bow", "Knife" and "Spear", constantly feeding the RDA commanders with disinformation. Jake soon had a good view of the conflict fields – both in terms of soldier garrisons but also of the fighting spirits and loyalty of local Na'vi. And opposite the RDA leaders were kept in the dark. This spying network nullified the RDA advantage with eyes in space.

As the agents became more adept in their spying business, they started to recruit informers, both human and na'vi. The network earned its laurels when informer "Soot C", a clerk in the office of brigadier Cox himself with a secret alcoholic addiction, revealed that agent "Tar" had started "doublecrossing" – he had revealed his spy status to the brigadier and started as a freelance agents selling information both ways. Agent "Drum" was instantly ordered to take care of him. Which he did and Georgios Kallifantonis came to a sorry end, he was the man going by the code name "Tar".

Reggie watched those shows in his pocket TV set and he saw many "special announcements", such as "rabidly in love at …", "mellow as a pudding", "large rocket under water"… but the message requesting him to move never came. But it looked like the messaging service worked well, it would never have been kept on otherwise – the staff at the intelligence leadership probably had enough to do otherwise so it had to be useful somehow.

One day Reggie saw many helicopters landing, unloading lots of military equipment, before they took to the air and some time later they returned with even more, also disgorging many soldiers. Reggie had a talk with the top hunter of the Bokoyw clan and got to know interesting stuff. This hunter was named a source registered as "Charcoal F" in the intelligence surveys of Jake Sully.

"The tawtute are massing for an attack on Mangrove Island to take it back. There is a rumour out that the Mangrove people are fully on the Namana side now, and a tawtute warrior I spoke with said that his eyktan had told him that Namana leaders have sent talkers over here too, including a former dreamwalker to convince them. So they need to win a major victory somewhere here at these islands, so that clans of the Ocean Federation are not to say that ay'tawtute are about to loose the war to the Namanas. No such major attack is possible at the mainland, the Namana clans hide in the forest so they can't get hold on them to really attack them. Well, the Mangrove people are our traditional enemies but our olo'eyktan has started wondering whether the tawtute really are able to defend us, no matter how many horrible weapons they have…"

A report was soon after sent to the Na'vi leadership, reading like this:

- Report from agent "Charcoal".

Source "Charcoal F" has supplied the information that RDA is massing for a major attack at Mangrove Island to regain the offensive momentum, in terms of propaganda and otherwise. A major battle for the control of oceans west of Namana Land is imminent.

RDA commanders are aware of Na'vi propaganda activity around in this archipelago. Caution is advised, propagandizers shouldn't linger too long in one clan and they shouldn't be informed about plans of Na'vi actions, they could be captured and interrogated. Remember that they too have access to interrogation through tsahaylu bonding.

Loyalty of islander clans to RDA is as of now reasonably good but there are signs of wavering. A heavy defeat on top of steady propaganda should do wonders for our effort. If some Namana warriors can sneak on to some island they might be able to take the island by coup while the mass of warriors are away, battling at Mangrove Island.

Meanwhile Jake had reports from spies among the Amananga clan at the Namana mainland. Out of their reports he understood that the garrison at the Amananga territory had been seriously depleted to power the assault at Mangrove Island. He understood that a critical point of time was approaching.

**Misfired Battle**  
A hefty battle force came over to Mangrove Island, under the command of "admiral" Gill.

It was decided to arrange an ambush at the Mangrove clan home tree. The RDA soldiers were not going to destroy the tree, their intention was to win the clan back to the Ocean Federation. They would come with an overwhelming force, offering the olo'eyktan their defending force. Attacking the tree itself wasn't necessary.

Warriors armed with rockets took up positions in the forest around the obvious landing place, snipers with rifles from Earth marked up ranges where shooting was simple, bombs where hidden in the vegetation, a scout took up position at the top of the home tree, to sound the alarm by blowing a flute when the tawtute were sighted. Then all who were not to take part in the battle were to immediately run for cover they were shown.

Brigadier Cox held a speech before taking to the air:

"My fellow soldiers, we are at war with the Namana Federation of Jake Sully. We are not at war with all Na'vi, meaning that all gentlemen and ladies in arms are never to forget to behave with discipline, dignity and restraint. I ask you to remember private Barkin, he was playful with a Na'vi boy but became a little too rough and the boy became frightened – he got a week in the brig! Now however, let us go and give 'em hell!"

He invested a whole regiment in the assault, i.e. forty helicopters plus the Big Dragon. To put in such a massive force he had to pull in two companies from the garrison at the Amananga clan's territory, only two operational companies were left there plus the one repairing. One of the companies were left to defend Bokoyw island while the main force, plus a good force of ikran-riders from allied clans, were to take on the Mangrove home tree. One fighting helicopter, type "Scorpion", went ahead as scout. It was the pilot on this helicopter who got wind of what Gill had arranged – he saw that the kelutrel tree was empty of people. Cox immediately got the message: "Take care boss! Every civilian has fled from the tree! This situation is stinking of ambush!" So Cox gave the order: "All 'copters: Halt! Await further order!"

In the end the patience of one of the ikran-riding hunters faltered. He attacked the scouting helicopter from high and behind, and tried to tumble it out of balance. The pilot got in serious trouble but he managed to gain back control and rise out of the skirmish, the hunter then took his ikran back into the trees and the pilot took his helicopter back into the formation. Then Cox aborted the attack. The trap had been sprung, catching nothing. No loss on either side but the golden opportunity had gone.

**Planning a New Attack**  
Back at the base at Bokoyw Island Cox was in an irate mood. No losses but… "I have been suspecting it for some time and I still can't prove it, but I now simply know that a Na'vi spy or more is loose here at the islands. The enemy knew that we were under way! Well, we'll have to plan another offensive action then. And this time we should take more care. What has our agent 'Benbenank' said about the situation at Mangrove Island, Griete?"

Margriete van Ouverhaank, his chief of operations, replied: "Nothing new since we evacuated the island. The propagandists of Jake Sully seem to have taken a good hold on the island."

"In other words the Mangrove Island isn't fertile ground for a new attack, not until we have demonstrated our superiority in some other battle. Since the enemy is holding the Mangrove Island this hard, some other island must be under weak control. With our helicopter-moving force we are more mobile than the enemy, who is moving much of their force over sea by canoe. Can you give me some island making a good candidate for such an attack, Griete?"

"The Tu'kutx Island should be a nice choice then. Or what about the Pakx archipelago? And boss, do you remember the satellite images of flying herds flying in patterns the intelligence people up at Svarog told us demonstrated that they very probably was Sully and his entourage? Cardoso Avellano is asking for licence to attack such a flock."

"Good to have a choice, then we can keep the enemy in the dark until last moment. The fact that no enemy long range radio communication has been detected means that those spies must be transmitting their messages by travelling messengers, in other words we can react faster than they can. And tell Cardoso Avellano that the licence to attack that flock has been granted – but he should prepare well and take care like we did!"

The day after Reggie got to see that the helicopters made ready once again. "Where is this raid going?" he asked his source "Charcoal AC". "Don't know yet, we have been told that we are not going to be told this until we are up in the air. And we are bringing along a whole engineering company this time, looks like Cox is intending to fortify at once this time, they are heading for a hard battle this time at the island they are heading towards now…"

Reggie felt depressed, he had no way of alarming Jake Sully quickly enough.

**The Decisive Battle**  
The helicopters took to the air early in the morning the day after. Up in the air they set the course for Tu'kutx Island. Soon as they landed a Na'vi speaking soldier read out a message in Na'vi language for the just awakening clan through a loudspeaker:

"Friends of Jake Sully and his Namana people! Come out and fight us! We are sky people intending to be your enemies and friends of Olo'tu'kutx. We have arrived in strong numbers to liberate the Tu'kutx from the tyranny of the Namana!"

The few warriors present ran to the forest at once, the rest of the clan followed the old saying that the one who bides his time now will live to fight another day. Engineers at once started digging "foxholes" and construct defence towers and autocannon turrets, and their control centre.

Upon hearing this pirogue eyktan Gill at once took action. Allowing them time to dig in would make it far harder to dislodge them later on. So the engineers working with the defences were set upon by warriors shooting out of the forest. With an incomplete defence perimeter, not yet controlled by a defence central, the mercenaries were vulnerable and Cox knew it, so he kept the helicopter crews at high alert while the engineers hurried.

So after a couple of days of harassing outpost skirmishing, Gill struck out. Some ikran-riders struck from the angle where towers were still not working, helicopters went to the air to give fight but the riders fled, so the defenders gave chase. And then it showed that the ikran-riders were a diversion, rockets struck down the few towers fully operational and then warriors on the ground captured the turrets. The clan then dropped the mask and ran to hiding while the fighting lasted. The RDA infantry was quickly put out of action – they had no time to enter AMP suits, and some of the Na'vi shot with guns. Then the control central was stormed and the armoury was emptied.

Soon after the helicopters and the ikran-riders loyal to the RDA company came back – and were met by rockets fired from the ground. End of the story was that thirtysix of the fortyone helicopters were more or less damaged, twelve of them had been outright shot down and three more had to emergency land and their crew bailed out shortly after. The loss of crew was even worse than the loss of aircrafts, two hundred fortysix men and women were killed or taken prisoner. The Na'vi had also suffered losses, fifteen ikran-riders and sixtyeight on the ground, but they could get reinforcements unavailable to the RDA mercenaries.

**Aftermath of the Battle**  
Back at the control central at Bokoyw Island brigadier Cox sat with a depressed look in his eyes. Only five of the aircrafts under his command were instantly airworthy and fit for fight, fourteen were in for serious repair and twelve more were only fit for their spare parts. The ten left could fly but they were not fit for fight or long distance flying, the aircraft techies had their job cut out for them. And of the hundred and thirty air crew people only fiftytwo came back. In short, the force holding the Bokoyw base was only a shadow of what it had been, it could by now barely hang on to the island.

Reggie got to hear about the disastrous defeat at Tu'kutx Island by a Samson helicopter gunner named Felix Potter, aka. "Charcoal B".

"We are seriously weakened now, if the various islands are attacked now, we have no means to assist them. Should the Bokoyw clan sense our weakness and rise up against us, to cozy up to Sully and his allies, there is no way of disciplining them open to us. Should so happen before we manage to repair our aircrafts, we'll have to evacuate to Nongona Land. The company directives declares these islands as not so heavily producing that we must risk too much with hanging on to them on the cost of those mines of strong production. So captain Scott have worked out plans for this already."

This report explaining what "Charcoal B" had said, went to Jake as soon as Reggie again met with agent "Flute".

And the propaganda agents really ran rampant in the archipelago, the ay'tawtute at Bokoyw were demonstrably no more in shape to defend them against the Namana, so when the Namana offered peace on benevolent terms there were little or no resistance. Most of the clans defected from the Ocean Federation one after another, a couple of clans had to be impressed by a show of force and there was an olo'eytkan who was a traditional and embittered enemy of the Mangrove clan, they had to depose him by force. And then another awful piece of news (i.e. to the RDA Company) came out: The assault at Jakesully in person had misfired completely and then the Amananga clan had defected, shortly afterwards the garrison was evacuated and all Ocean Federation resistance at Namana Land had collapsed. A certain feeling of doom spread among the RDA staff.

Reggie, however, could now see with a glee well hidden from other RDA people that Jake Sully's words of the power of guerrilla were coming true.

**End of the Island Campaign**  
Then, a few days after having heard about the fall of the Amananga garrison, Reggie was sitting keeping books about consignments of ore sent up to Svarog. He heard some commotion and looked up from his books and saw a soldier coming running.

"Reggie! Now is time to get out of here, pronto! The chieftain just said that he has had talks with Namana diplomats, they have told him that the Namana do not intend to conquer the islands, only to assemble an independent federation friendly with the Namana but by no means subservient. So he said that he in other words had no more need for us, he asked all sky people to leave this island, on the double! You should have seen the face of Cox when he heard this! I am heading for 'copter five-sixer, find yourself one you too!"

Reggie dropped everything and ran for some helicopter with place. Just as he came to the landing place the next to last one took to air, the pilot at the last one yelled at him: "No vacant room here. Go find some canoe and paddle over to Nongona Land! Help yourself, Reggie!"

Once again Reggie had to do his "false evasion trick". As soon as the helicopters all were airborne, he walked to the home tree and identified himself as agent "Charcoal" – and met with agent "Flute". "You have done a very good job, 'Charcoal'. I just heard from agent "Soot" that she reported that all miners and engineers left the other islands too. Now we are on to Nongona Land to drive them out of there too! Try to settle in some eastern coastal clan, to make it simpler to locate you."

**Infiltrating the Nongona Land**  
Reggie found himself a canoe and paddled it out to sea. It was a long paddle trip, he stopped over at several islands and took rest. Finally he beached his canoe at the east coast and walked inland. He asked a clansman he met with to lead him to some tawtute and they walked in that direction. But the tone in the voice of the male who showed him the way was unmistakeable. "Dreamwalker, you should know that your ilk and other tawtute are not well liked here at this land. Until some days ago we simply tolerated a few of them and mostly ignored them, but then a big horde of those people descended on us. ("That 'big horde' is probably less than two hundred people" Reggie thought to himself. "They should have seen old Hell's Gate…") We had a female scout in our home tree some days ago who said that she came from the Namana Land far to the east, she said that we were right in feeling aversion towards them. She said that the Sky people has been driven off Namana Land and the islands out east, they would soon be chased away from all of this world. Furthermore she said that all clans at Nongona Land should at once drop all old and useless clan feuds to rid ourselves of this pestilence from the sky – we would get assistance from east if we decide so. She even said that many other Nongona clans already are in for this plan."

Reggie decided to drop his mask now. "Among the Sky people they think that I am a dreamwalker named Reggie Calhoun. But actually I am Zäntx te Nakxal Tsu'ru'itan, secret Namana agent to find their secrets. I can assure you that they are weak, if all of you turn against them and with Namana assistance, then they will stand no chance however fearsome weaponry they have."

The Nongona male gazed at him with a most astonished gaze. "You don't say? Wow! I must tell my olo'eyktan about this, at once! Come with me! Let's hurry!" Reggie… no sorry, Zäntx for ever hereafter, was taken to the clan home tree and was made to say his business again. He asked some hunter to at once go to some islander home tree to find some Namana to bring back the message – at Bokoyw Island they would probably find a fishing eyktan named Ngill, he needed to take action at once. Then the Nongona Land would probably fall to the Na'vi in entirety and with hardly any bloodletting at all.

Brigadier Cox and his close people were meanwhile sitting in a makeshift garrison in the forest. Chief of operations van Ouverhaank gave him a quick survey of the situation. "Boss, we are as you are well aware of, in deep shit. We only got one squadron worth of helicopters out when the base at Bokoyw Island fell, ten that is plus the Big Dragon. Twentyfour of our men and women failed to get away in time, including our avatar agent Reggie. Their whereabouts are unknown, they are probably prisoners of war now – if the Na'vi do keep POWs at all that is. And the rumour about our defeat has most probably been spread far and wide at this continent too, eagerly spread out by Sully's agents we must presume. What I have heard about the inclination of the Nongona clans isn't favourable, and with our present strength there is simply no way we can conduct any anti-guerilla campaign here. I propose that we make ready to transfer to Gargoyle Fish Land on short notice, just in case. Those clans are at least steadfast allies, as for now at least." "Go ahead, prepare such a contingency plan, for the occasion that it reveals itself as necessary."

**The Defection of Nongona Land from the Ocean Federation**  
An RDA employee well versed in Na'vi, in other words a "talker" (i.e. diplomat) started to go around the clans to reassure them that the setback at the islands in the sea east of Nongona Land was a temporary but not insurmountable reversal to the Ocean Federation. The ay'eyktan of the first and second clans she visited could be convinced but then she came to the inland river Lolor clan and then she made a very disturbing and revealing sight.

"Hello brigadier Cox, agent Aisha Ben Bashir here. You should come to the Lolor clan as soon as at all possible, bringing some armed men. Agent Reggie is here, dressed in loincloth and talking about throwing all tawtute at sea! And he seems to be winning the hearts and minds of the clan people!" "HE IS WHAT! I am coming!" Cox yelled into the mic, so loudly that van Ouverhaank sitting close by felt pain in her ears.

Sitting in the helicopter flying through the air he cursed the agent loudly and bitterly: "I just KNEW that there was a rat in our larder! I'll personally shoot him and throw his body to the sharks – to the viperwolves – no to the maggots in the soil… I'll cut him to small pieces first… I'll have him grilled and roasted alive before even that…"

Zäntx, formerly agent Reginald P. Calhoun, was just making ready to leave for another clan when he heard the deep whirring sound of the approaching Big Dragon. "All warriors get their bows! Now there will be a battle! Run into cover!" he screamed. The big helicopter landed and a loudspeaker blared out in Na'vi: "We have been informed that the traitor against the Ocean Federation Reggie Calhoun is here, so we have come to arrest him!" Then Cox came out, brandishing a pistol and with ten soldiers in his following. He said, translated by agent Ben Bashir: "Honoured olo'eytkan Mut'upx, please hand over this traitor dreamwalker named Reggie Calhoun! He is to be given a Sky people punishment for his treason!" But Mut'upx replied firmly: "We are NOT extraditing any dreamwalker since there isn't any such person here, we only have a guest named Zäntx here and he is a full Na'vi. Quite to the contrary, you should leave our territory without slightest delay, preferably all of this land too. Be good to leave from here in peace, or will we need to use force to make you leave?"

Cox got "slackjaw" in his astonishment but after some seconds he collected himself and said: "Mut'upx, I must repeat: Please give us Reggie!" And he pointed his gun at Mut'upx.

Zäntx, formerly Reggie, stood among the branches of the home tree just then. Now he called out: "Our olo'eyktan is under threat, save him! Shoot down those ay'tawtute!" The warrior's bowstrings smacked and arrows whizzed, suddenly five of the ten soldiers were impaled. The arrow meant for Cox missed but he fired his gun and Mut'upx fell to the ground. Then he turned and fled while new arrows were loosened and the words in Na'vi filled the air: "Take them! Take them!" He jumped into the helicopter and it took to the air. He took the mic and radioed the base: "Main Nongona base, the order is immediate evacuation! They are all turning against us now! The failure to arrest Reggie will be announced to all and sundry at Nongona Land, as will the accident with Mut'upx – everyone will be told that he was murdered in cold blood!"

**End of the Island Campaign  
**Gargoyle Fish Land was just at the edge of the range of the helicopters but they all made it. But the hold on Nongona Land was very simply forfeit now, whoever had been their friends there changed their minds on the spot when they were told what had taken place, exactly as Cox had said would happen. In no time afterwards the archipelago west of Nongona Land was out of control too, to no small degree abetted by the local agent of Jake codenamed "Night". And what was worse, Northern Land, with rich mines of good unobtanium ore, defected from the Ocean Federation soon after.

The olo'eyktan Ngizino of the Ice Hunter clan, the out of scale most powerful clan at Northern Land, was endowed with a clever brain. His sense of political currents was acute and after the fall of Nongona Land his instincts told him very clearly that the tawtute had a stench of total failure clinging to them, he had been told this very clearly when the local agent of Jake codenamed "Coke" revealed himself and explained him the state of current affairs. So one day Ngizino walked over to the head mining engineer at Northern Land and told her:

"Since the battle at Tu'kutx Island everything has been going only one way for the Ocean Federation. We at Northern Land are not the least interested in getting embroiled into any violent conflict, we are of peaceful inclination all northern clans. So until the Ocean Federation manages to turn the situation over by gaining back the Nongona Land and the small islands, You can regard us as neutral in this struggle. So please be good to get away from here. You will be allowed to leave this land in peace, but please do so. In any case if You don't want to be our enemies…"

The engineer understood from the chieftain's demeanor that this was very seriously meant. So she replied: "Very well, we leave in peace and hope to one day return in peace. Good bye, friend of the Sky people Ngizino of the Ice Hunter clan! Leah Hornsby of the Sky people has spoken." They greeted politely and she turned and walked away. She went to her agents, told them the tidings and then they all turned towards their helicopter, and then they started for Gargoyle Fish Land too. Very soon after the Northern Land renounced its neutrality, a scout was sent over to Namana Land, when after some time he was brought to the presence of Jake Sully the allegiance of Northern Land to the Namana Land Federation was declared, Jake replied that subjugation was not what was intended but a cordial understanding with an independent federation: The Northern one, like the Western Island and the Nongona Land federations and others that were just now taking shape.

**Aftermath of the String of Defeats**  
Brigadier Cox met with colonel Avellano Cardoso at the base at Gargoyle Fish garrison and they held a war council. A quick survey of the situation told them that a further erosion of the RDA positions were unlikely in the short run: In two months time a new regiment would be ready for deployment at Pandora, the clans at Gargoyle Fish Land were peaceful well beyond the Northern clans' attitude, they were downright pacifist. Traditional enmity versus the Namana mainlanders among the Atoll Islander clan and the Marakxali clan still worked in favour of RDA, and the Atoll Islanders still firmly believed in the Omatikaya involvement in the murder of the daughter of the local chieftain. They had even handed over to the soldiers a Namana female who had tried to infiltrate.

But the fact remained, in the run of only a little more than three months more than half of the territories of Pandora had been lost to the Ocean Federation, the federation was now little more than a sham. The loss of the mines at Northern Land and at the Amananga territories were most painful of all to the RDA Company. But when reported this, the directors of the company replied that they should stay satisfied with what they had, until the virus cultures arrived and were ready to take effect in some few years.

As for the Na'vi side of the conflict, olo'eyktan Mut'upx was the one and only Na'vi fatality during the struggle for the Nongona Land. His son Laknim'e was soon the new olo'eyktan, and when the Nongona Federation was established, the once dreamwalker Zäntx was offered a job as assistant scout leader of the clan, which he proudly accepted. In time he learned his job to perfection, ably taught by the scouting eyktan of the clan, he would one day in the future end up as schoolmaster of the tribe's scouting school. Meeting with Jakesully he was presented by the regional nxi'eyktan with pride as our own Nongona war hero of the conflict, next after the heroic Mut'upx – he had assisted the Na'vi more than any other defecting avatar agents, save for agent Sarasinithat. "Yes indeed, Mut'upx was a hero and Zäntx is one too, that is for sure!" Jake commented when Laknim'e presented Zäntx this praise.

But Jake reminded Laknim'e about agents "Ink" and "Asphalt" who all the time had been active at Nongona Land until Zäntx grabbed the opportunity, they had been doing patient intelligence and agitation work to prepare the ground for the coup of Zäntx. They deserved praise too and had received it, Donald MacTaggart alias Tsu'tsu ("Ink") and Sue Ellin alias Beytu ("Asphalt") were heaped with praise by their respective clans, few of the members of those clans would even think about admitting that Zäntx was more of a hero than them.


	7. The War of Propaganda and Intelligence

There is a story from the 2nd Human – Na'vi War that needs to be told, about the wars for propaganda and intelligence. They were fronts in the war with few fatalities either way, there were few dramatic events but lots of bland everyday work. However, like in any war, victory on this front was crucial as to who was to win in the end.

It was a war of thoughts, ideas and words; where speeches were like skirmishes, rumours started or retold were like sniper shots, rhetorics were the tactical movements and gifted speakers were the soldiers. It was a conflict where one side as a matter of course held the technological advantage firmly in hand at first, while the other side made a virtue out of the lack of technology and eventually capturing enough means to even out the technological advantage of the opponent, at least during short surprise attacks.

**Outbreak of Hostilities  
**Propaganda and intelligence wars will often start long before shots are fired, RDA opened these campaigns even before Jake Sully had any idea that they were under attack. It really started only a few hours after the last "Valkyrie" space ferry of ISV "Canopus" had left.

Brigadier Neville Cox, head of the military contingent, was sitting in his small office at the moon of Svarog, with the moon of Pandora visible through his little glass window. He had just taken care of an annoying problem, eliminating three traitors to humanity and RDA. The medics had not been happy to be appointed executioners of those unconscious persons so Cox had had to take the glove off. "There are three traitors on those gurneys. These three syringes are what they rightly deserve for their treason. So push those needles into those shoulders, get the … going!"

Now he sat down with Manolo Kontakarides, the head of PR corps of the expedition, Concetta Reveteri the head of the secret agents – all the field agents as well as the analytical office of Julia Ragimberti and the hit men of Vittorio Cutta, and with Perry Henson, who as the head of mining activity was to be the first among equals of them. "Now the initiative is up to you guys. You have the advantage of the first move, being a passionate chess player I guess that you Manolo are aware of the undeniable advantage of opening the game. Make that move count! And being a man with degrees in logistics and marketing, I guess that you Perry are aware of the importance of making a good mark of yourself."

All the four of them were acutely aware of that importance of starting on a good note, they had drilled their agents relentlessly in this before taking off from Earth. They were by now spreading out over Pandora, studying local relationships, spreading word of the benevolence of New RDA and establishing cordial relationships with many a chieftain and important Na'vi otherwise.

He took the booklet that had been the main item in the PR agent course syllabus. PR director Marina Krasnitskaya had spent many months in careful authorship of this booklet, debating endlessly the small points of diplomatic behaviour and company goals with other RDA staff people, down to the last comma.

The chapters read like an itemized list: Study details of geography, natural and political, not all of it is visible from space. Spread the happy news of the arrival of the New RDA, stress its complete difference from the evil Old RDA, the many useful things we can do for them in return for ore. Ignite fires of suspicion and antagonism with the Namana Land clans in general and the Omatikaya in special. Fan to fire the embers of such animosity already present. Always, always, always behave courteous and with all deference to Pandoran nature and Na'vi culture and traditions, however quaint. Anytime some agent of whatever department is making a blunder on this field, do promise swift retribution for it and see to that the Na'vi you are in contact with get to see that our commitment to our Na'vi allies is serious. Finally, you must at all cost avoid getting caught by the clans allied with the Omatikaya – they have powerful interrogation techniques! This means that you should keep on the move and not linger for too long among one clan, and on first hint of some approaching Omatikaya or the like then either go into hiding, or preferably, move on.

Brigadier Cox was no less strict about reminding his men about what due military discipline meant, he always bent over backwards to keep in the good grace of the clans they were allied with. The soldier who stole a knife from a clansman got two weeks in the brig at Svarog for it, after being run through the gauntlet almost Medieval in its roughness – some Na'vi were invited to take part in the gauntlet lines. Visiting Na'vi, whether curious kids or formal visits, were always received with hospitality, visiting ay'olo'eyktan were received with formal military parades. The clans clearly understood that these soldiers were not like the brutal goons they had heard rumours about some years ago, in time they returned the respect in kind, for instance with tipping the RDA people about it when agents from the Namana Federation were coming. It was the same way with the miners, mining engineers, trading agents and technicians of the technical department, technical director Viveka Sundelin had held school for her agents and auxiliary staff too, like all the others. The intelligence point about this was to erect a barrier against agents coming from the Namana Federation, the PR point about this was twofold, to make allied clans as immune as possible against the propaganda of Sully and his people, and to deny Sully the advantage of righteousness: Our civilization versus their barbary.

Kontakarides' PR department was like all departments under order to always cooperate intimately with each other. The fifty agitators were to immediately pass on to the fortyfive secret agent any useful information they got the sniff of – sometimes the information was passed further on to the four hit men the intelligence people had brought from Earth… as well as to the miners, auxiliaries and purchasers of the technical staff. Interesting news was also passed the other way, of course.

PR was important for internal use too. The soldiers were reminded about the backwardness of this people, they were to be won over to serve the RDA preferably by civilized means, their role was to lie low and only serve as watchkeepers until a war broke out. But when war broke out – woe unto the enemies of us and our Na'vi allies! The PR and intelligence agents were reminded that eyes in space would be assisting them, on top of eyes, ears and mouths of other agents, of miners in the villages and of benevolent clanspeople. In short, treat the PR and intelligence networks with loving care and it would keep on delivering RDA information the enemy couldn't find out about.

**Heyday of New RDA**  
So the agents were soon all over the length and breadth of Pandora, spreading the joyful message of a new and better RDA back at Pandora, offering clans their friendship and support in return for ore. The PR agents obeyed the manual they had been taught at Earth to the best of their ability, it took the leadership of the Namana Federation, i.e. Jake Sully and his former avatar friends and Na'vi supporters, quite some time before they understood that humans were loose at Pandora again, and by then the Ocean Federation the agents had proposed to organize the action against Sully's people was a well rooted fact. Amanangas, Marakxalis and Atoll Islanders with firearms were revealing signs, the final and irrefutable sign was when an ID card was found in the vegetation close to the Amananga home tree.

The full extent of the RDA infiltration was finally revealed when a PR agent was captured and presented for the Namana Federation council. The sinister plan behind the nice phrases and studied manners were revealed too. So the messengers of Jake went out to tell these truths they had discovered – and came to discover just how deep roots the sympathy with RDA had struck, the clans of the Ocean Federation simply refused to believe what they were told!

Jake then tried to force the truth the truth he knew down the throat of those restive clans and got a severe retribution for his lack of understanding for the significance of winning hearts and minds first. The Battle at the Stone Covered Well was an utterly horrible defeat. Afterwards the RDA agents went on a propaganda rampage all over Namana Land, seeding discontent with the Omatikaya leadership and defaitism in front of the might of the Ocean Federation. The RDA mercenaries were more than ever convinced about the water tight advantage given them by their technology, their Na'vi allies in their turn admired the power the alliance with RDA gave them too.

But then Jake woke up to the power of guerrilla and the towering importance of intelligence and propaganda, explained him by MacGregor and Tran Thi Dung. So he put the certain organizational talents he had trained up during these years into this activity too. These talents were to no small degree knowing how to discern talents in the people he had to do with, and putting those persons to the right place, debating with them and taking to heed good ideas he could haul out of them, more than a creative talent of his own. He had after all a bunch of remarkably smart people in his service, both Na'vi and humans, so why not make the best out of them!

First of all his mate Neytiri, with her deep knowledge of nature and traditions of Pandora, also his mother-in-law Mo'at, excelling in patient arguing with people, she was the Pandoran epitome of an "eminence grise". There were other prominent Na'vi like Atanzau, the master of history telling who knew the old society traditions he needed to not tear down but build further on, another was his n-i-c Tsailoni, with a deep knowledge of Na'vi warriors and traditional warfare that made up the groundwork of martial ability he needed to build on.

Furthermore, there were former avatar people like Norm, with his superior sense of society organization – he had trained in anthropology after all. Like Max the expert on Na'vi bodies and avatar building, he was indispensable when it came to running the avatar program until it was time to say good bye to humanity. Or like Trudy, with her grasp on warfare in the air. He could draw on the military smartness of Jeff Enright, the seamanship of Deke Gill, the forest knowledge of Ernest Gumm, the knowledge of history of Earth offered by MacGregor and Tran Thi Dung, of the facility for geography of Kim Chae, and he depended heavily on the mastery of the O'Leary couple of computers and Cresson of radio watching.

**Propaganda and Intelligence Battle Planning**  
Na'vi propaganda and intelligence was given to Neytiri to take special care of. Jake reasoned that he better put the contacts of Neytiri – and the grey eminence Mo'at behind her – to good use, she would very probably grow frustrated if she was put on the sidelines during the great struggle. Tran Thi Dung came from a people at Earth with a long tradition for secret work and Neytiri listened to her advices, Tran Thi Dung became so to say her councillor in the war front of ideas and informations.

There was by nature two very different fronts to handle – human and na'vi, of very different natures.

Neytiri sent out many, many agents roaming around, never staying for too long within one clan to not be captured by enemies or their Na'vi allies. The propaganda agents were always followed by two or three bodyguards travelling incognito along with them, to let the agent get away if enemies were on to them and to kidnap enemy agents of propaganda and intelligence they met with. Those bodyguards stood aside when the agents held speeches. Neytiri's trump ace was the captured RDA agent Sarasinithat, her testimony wasn't presented until the RDA forces in an area was reeling – she was a far too valuable propganda weapon to be risked in "hot" combat zones, she was always escorted by a **strong** bodyguard.

She also had many secret agents infiltrated one by one, providing her with lots of useful information highly useful to Jake and his warrior leaders. Some of those agents were RDA agents, in permanent avatar bodies that was, who had been captured and "turned around". Those agents were contacted by special travelling agents who shuttled to and fro their contacts.

Human propaganda and intelligence was enthrusted to the triumvirate Angie Cresson, Shawn and Maeve O'Leary, faithfully served by Angie's mate Todd. Todd built some still air-tight rooms in the old and rather run down localities at Augustine Research Station up to a primitive but fully workable broadcasting studio. They soon found out that all humans at Pandora this time had been equipped with small pocket radio sets, working like a music recorder, cell phone, radio, handheld computer and TV set all rolled into one. Shawn soon found out how to hack into those radio waves and they started their own ham TV station, bringing the humans and avatars news the company was not fond of.

In those broadcasts Angie was the "talking head", she was shown as a computer animated human face so as to be less outlandish to human eyes – she was a permanent Omatikaya Na'vi by now behind that "talking face" they saw in the screens during the broadcasts. The daily fare during the broadcasts was of course news but also much music, downloaded from the pocket radio sets of RDA people killed or captured in combat as well as, however of less quality, directly from broadcasts direct from Earth. They clearly appreciated the fact that in a few years these broadcasts would probably be seen at Earth too, probably a little garbled but still.

Shawn put a lot of work in composing the film footage to be broadcasted by the far superior broadcasting equipment they had up at the moon of Svarog once the victory was at hand and RDA in its entirety had been driven away from all of Pandora. He wrote and often reedited the script for what to be said when he narrated this footage, and some points he then wanted Naraporn, i.e. agent Sarasinithat, to touch when she was going to give her testimony.

While Angie played human music and read out the news at "Station Pandoran Freedom", often with satirical comments to news presented by the RDA station, Maeve worked as journalist, gathering news from the Namana Federation leadership, from prisoners of war, from downloads of broadcasts from Earth and many other sources too. As time went by and the computer wizardry of Shawn carried on a new channel of information opened up, from a new and very revealing information source: eavesdroppings of various RDA correspondence. Maeve put in something in her reportages she remembered from history classes at Earth: During the 2nd World War BBC had gained an immense reputation for eminently believable war reporting. They had gained this by keeping scrupulously to a golden rule: Verifiable truth will kill blatant lies on the spot and increase the power of believability immensely. And important items in the broadcasts were special messages to undercover Na'vi agents, messages they would understand but nobody else.

Shawn worked much as a producer of her broadcasts. But more of his time went into hacking the RDA messages running to and fro. He it was who one day dechiffered a message from Earth stating that a Na'vi killing virus culture had been consigned from Earth, the item of news was soon brought to the knowledge of Jake. This was the singular most important piece of communication he managed to hack but there were hundreds or thousands of others: Reports from commanders about actions planned and evaluations of battle outcomes, musings of Na'vi plans, reports from RDA agents around giving clues to their whereabouts – enabling warrior teams to apprehend some of them… Even coded messages not dechiffered were useful, they pointed out locations where funny things were going on. Neytiri was in other words told to stop envying the RDA their quick radiocommunications, the messenger communication of the Na'vi was surely far slower – but also infinitely more eavesdropping-proof…

**The Attack against Augustine**  
When the RDA broadcasters started jamming his station, Shawn understood that their broadcastings was having effect on the humans at Pandora and felt proud, with some computer manipulations he was able to override those disturbing signals. But he also understood that these signals were a sign of danger, the RDA people had taken note of them and if they couldn't neutralize them by electronic countermeasures then they would likely try it the hard way. After a botched attack against the Mountain clan, where two helicopters were shot down making it a burning defeat, made possible by a captured message stating that the home caves of the Mountain clan were vulnerable, Cox had understood that the studio at Augustine was an important target in the war.

Shawn saw the danger, he requested and was granted a guard kumpongu of warriors of the station, they made ready for ambushing any attackers. He furthermore took backup copies of all material at the station and sent the files with documents and software he had developed with ikran-flyers to Jake's headquarter for safekeeping and he asked Todd to make ready for instant evacuation if need should arise. So they all kept their personal ay'ikran at the ready for evacuation at all times. Todd mounted a sirena on the roof to strike alarm in case of attack.

The last straw came when Shawn even had the temerity to attempt to hack into the broadcasts of RDA itself to its personnel at Pandora, to insert Jake's messages into them. Technically the attempt was mostly a failure, Jake's blue face was only on their waves for a few seconds but the coup had been done, the propaganda defeat was small but significant and countermeasures now had to be taken. The planning for the attack at Augustine now started in earnest.

The warrior on watch was sitting and taking it easy when he suddenly heard the whirr of an approaching helicopter – no, many 'copters! He immediately took the action he had been asked to, he struck the red button Todd had put up a number of around the station. The alarm sirena immediately kicked in and so did emergency measures Jake had presented them with. The warriors at once ran to the forest and took cover, waiting for the attack.

Inside Angie was right then sitting and having a drink of her favourite tea, made from some special bush leaves, stressing down to make ready for a show. Yet another secret was to be revealed today, the rumour that RDA people had spread among the staff that prisoners of the Na'vi would be tortured to death was false, she had recorded a greeting from a POW to his brothers-in-arms to be shown today. Shawn was sitting and pondering what this RDA message he had downloaded meant, had RDA changed chiffer again? He better take it to the computer to analyze it once again. And Todd was just carrying out an antenna he had crafted, with better signal broadcasting ability they should be able to capture the radio waves now. Maeve was absent, to record the wreck of the helicopter RDA news had claimed to be crashed in inclement weather, the nearly atomized remains of the vessel clearly demonstrated that it had been shot down by a clean rocket hit up in the air.

But then the sirena sounded. Everyone grabbed their belongings, tumbled out and mounted their ay'ikran. In less than five minutes they were airborne all three of them, in the nick of time because the helicopters came down shortly after. They searched the premises, finding nobody… BOOM! BOOM! Two helicopters were struck down by rockets striking out of the forest! The allied ikran-riders gave chase after the station guards who had fired the rockets, they only managed to put an arrow in the wing of one of them, the arrow went straight through the wing membrane. Nothing too serious. Soldiers came out of the studio room shortly after, having timed the bomb – ten minutes to go until the studio was gutted! The "Big Dragon" came down and picked them up, and they returned to base. A huge blast was heard, success!

The attack had been a success, albeit a rather dear one, two more helicopters and two air crew men killed, those losses were hard to replace. The four at the station were depressed, their broadcasting and listening station "Station Pandoran Freedom" had been silenced. They took solace from the fact that their station had obviously been a big pain in the neck for RDA, since they had taken the trouble to destroy it. But the raiders hadn't been totally successful, all important material – news reports, documents, software, the disc with program to be shown at the day of victory and much else, had been taken to safety well before the attack. And Jake cheered them up and told them to take some well deserved R&R time, and before they knew it they would probably be on the air again… He gave them a knowing smile, and the four understood that something big was approaching.

Three boring weeks started. The taste of R&R was good but they would much rather have taken to the waves to make themselves useful again. But they passed time with preparing for the time when they could go on air again – Angie composed shows, Maeve went for a long expedition to the western islands to record the erosion of RDA power there, Todd busied himself with locating good places for putting up antenna equipment again, and Shawn pondered on the decoding of some chiffers RDA had put into use.

Then two monumental events took place. The Battle at Tu'kutx Island took place, it was a resounding and very decisive success for the Na'vi, prepared for over a long time by patient agitation and espionage in the archipelago. The battle marked the beginning to the end of the RDA presence over the great oceans of Pandora. And the day after the battle the attack against Jake Sully himself misfired badly, Jake then grabbed the initiative and brought Sarasinithat to the Amananga home tree and she told olo'eyktan Lazafnu everything she knew. The clan immediately defected from the Ocean Federation and joined the Namana Land Federation, the garrison nearby was evacuated and the arsenals and storehouses were at once emptied. They couldn't get everything they wanted away from it, the rail gun would have been very useful for the further war but it was among the things demolished when the rail gun of the other main RDA base, at Sea Maggot Island, opened fire on what had been the Amananga base. But they did get a lot out, and Jake's chief military planner, Jeff Enright, went to inspect what had been captured.

**Taking to the Ether Waves Anew**  
Shawn was sitting and feeding his ikran a tetrapteron just captured, a forest ikran in plain speaking, when Maeve suddenly came running up the Omatikaya home tree trunk. "Shawn! It is scramble time! A messenger just came from Jeff at the storehouse at the Amananga garrison storehouse, he is asking us to get there on the double! Something important must be afoot, concerning us! Do you really think that… I have told Todd and Angie to come along with us too…"

In no time they were up and ready for take off. North to Amananga home tree they went and then to the garrison, some hundred meters away from the ruins of the base they found Jeff with a big pile of crates.

"The content of the crates is useful stuff; Lots of weaponry and ammunition, food rations and exopacks for our human bodied POWs, some maps and pocket TVs, but take a look into those boxes over there!" Jeff could hardly hide his glee. The two mated pairs took some looks into the boxes – by Jove! With those spare parts and some building ingenuity they could build a full broadcasting set! Control board, recorders, cameras… antennae, power stations, computers… yes, even portable sets for reportages outside studios! OK, no mixing board and only one channel doubling board – meaning they had to either listen or show – so Todd and Shawn would have to get building some equipment themselves, probably primitive but working.

Shawn looked up and said to Todd: "Now we can restart our broadcasting once again! Fly to what is left of Augustine and try to rebuild the studio there, we'll soon come with this machinery. Angie, we must arrange transportation of these things up to Augustine, get some fa'li, I'll help you. Maeve, fly to Omatikaya home tree and take the goodies we hid there to Augustine, we'll put it to use soon now. And tell Neytiri that we'll probably be up and running the broadcastings and listening again soon."

Bringing many boxes that far distance on horseback was no simple task, it took a whole week. Rebuilding the studio at the station and then rigging it up again for broadcasting and eavesdropping was no simple task either, that took yet another week. And a week more would probably last before Todd had constructed makeshifts for the equipment they lacked. But finally it was ready, all was switched on and worked to satisfaction, Angie inserted the software she had rescued when the station was put out of action and images came up once again, Shawn tuned in on a comm satellite up there and could hear a panic stricken report – Bokoyw Island had fallen to the Na'vi and all the rest of the archipelago looked like loosing spirit of loyalty – it looked like all the rest of the clans allied to RDA in the archipelago between Nongona and Namana Lands were defecting too! Neytiri was very pleased indeed to hear the news that the "Station Pandoran Freedom" was up and running again.

With no tawtute bases left at Namana Land, a new raid against the station was now out of the question. Only one weapon could reach them now, a rail gun shell. And quite a few of them were aimed their direction but they all missed. Todd had put the radio equipment on wheels now and moved it around, with the antenna – a component easily rebuilt – placed at a safe distance from the studio. So when the rail gun aimed at the signal it only blasted a cheap antenna – again and again. Furthermore all broadcastings were pre-recorded and run automatically, even if they had managed to aim the rail gun correctly and crash the station they would have only destroyed some machinery but no life would have been lost. But no shell struck it – and Maeve and Angie made them realize the futility of those bombardments when shows started up again.

Now times were providential again. For the first show after the station had come back on the air again, Angie presented a coy little smile: "They thought they put us out of air permanently, but permanence may be a surprisingly short time! And here is the news for today. Jake Sully, c-in-c of all Na'vi forces announces to all avatar agents that they had better join our side soon, it will soon be too late. So save your life and abandon the sinking Titanic ship of RDA while you still can! Today's defection from the so-called 'Ocean Federation' is the Tomo'ingi Land west of Nongona Land, after the ignominous fall of Nongona Land itself. Some music now. At six tonight, Atoll Islands time, we will show the episode 'Palafox' in the series 'Guerilla!', from the war in Spain between Napoleon and Spanish guerrillas."

While this was announced, Maeve was sitting and looking through all the document material salvaged from the Amananga base. Lots of music. Many secret files with photographs, film footage, documents, audio recordings… Making for hours upon hours of shows for Angie to present, a load of good journalistic bombs! And hey, what is this – looks like a username and password to something, got to show this to Shawn at once!

Todd was meanwhile busy with putting up a new parabola antenna he had fashioned out of the parabola system of the old rail gun. The dynamo of the rail gun had arrived, by fa'li back transportation, earlier that day, with a good deal stronger power supply they could start thinking big about interference on the RDA radio waves. Of course the power supply of RDA was many times stronger still than this but on the other hand they had many, many times more items of technology to supply energy to, so perhaps something serious could be done to those radio waves…

Shawn was sitting inside his little office with electronic intelligence material from Amananga base. Those files were a veritable gold mine! And together with that username and password he Maeve had found, he could really infiltrate the RDA machinery! He had many projects now – logical bombs, jamming attacks, viruses, worms, program capture… He put all his ingenuity and every technique he had learned in the computer classes, added some tricks he had picked up from some notorious cyber-pranksters and topped with some ideas of his own making. Now he was happy to have had those three weeks of R&R for now times were busy, and it was good to have Maeve at his side, active with implementation of the gadgets he constructed. To avoid rousing the teletechnicians at the enemy side Neytiri ordered him to wait for the good opportunity soon to come to take action, and until then he kept refining his electronic warfare equipment. Good idea – courtesy of Tran Thi Dung…

**A Blast of Cyber Warfare**  
Now one day Neytiri came along and judging from her face expression she had clearly discussed carefully with her agents, with Jake and his n-i-c Tsailoni, with Jeff his head of planning and others. Shawn and Todd understood that something big and decisive was afoot now. "Sia'on and Totx, it is time now to make ready for a heavy attack at the Sea Maggot Island base. Propaganda broadcasts will soon be suspended until the attack is finish, the radio equipment is now needed for other uses so for now say good bye to your viewers – find some believable excuse. She will be given ten minutes warning when it is time to take a break for it. The station will be centre of command and Angie has been given orders about what to do in each case, you should listen in for you have tasks to do too and Mäve too. In one hand of days she will in the deep of the night hear the message: 'Calling airport, Island gang here' That is a call sign for her to listen up. She will then hear the message either 'Action' or 'Abort', in first case she will pass the message "Flyers: Action!" to the ikran-flyers of Lutu and Trutxytsakon, then they will fly over to Sea Maggot Island to join the ground attack party of Jeff in capturing the base. If the message is the latter, they will fly over to the island to rescue the warriors there. Finally, when you hear the message 'Action' then put to action all the measures available to you! And if the message is 'Abort', stay calm and do nothing. So you two and Mäve too, make ready for now it is time for a hard push!"

Neytiri didn't say it, she felt it embarrassing to be so completely ignorant about the weapons those four former dreamwalkers could put in action but she had understood long ago that they were very powerful and counted the Na'vi happy for having them on their side in this fight. She had interrogated dreamwalkers who had defected from RDA when they had listened to the speeches of Angie, she had seen how Mäve had been talking with prisoners and created convincing stories she had had opportunity to watch the retelling of in those small metal boxes the tawtute carried with them. She had heard how Sia'on had stolen secrets from RDA down from the sky… And always Totx built and constructed all kinds of contraptions enabling them to perform this incomprehensible wizardry… Jake and Norm always treated them with great respect and that told her a great deal.

Then in the evening four days later Neytiri came to Angie and told her that now was the time, that message was passed on to the other three too. Angie read out a message that the station "Free Pandora" now would take a break due to technical problems. Angie then sat down with her radio set, hardly even taking time for food, just listening to static until she would be hearing the familiar voice of Jeff. Meanwhile the three other frenetically made ready for cyber battle.

Todd geared up the big dynamo and rigged up the huge antenna that had been part of the rail gun assembly. Then he connected every gadget and sat down with controlling them.

Maeve uploaded a logical bomb Shawn had created in the RDA systems, designed to switch off radars, searchlights and sensors otherwise – ready for detonation when Angie dialled a very special code, reading like 123,4-5,678 – counting Na'vi fingers on each hand that is… Time of detonation was set at immediately after setting off the attack.

Shawn made ready a jamming program that would totally shut down the radars, should they even manage to awake from the paralysis of the logical bomb. Next item in the list was a program that would capture radio communication, completely blocking all messaging with an image of a big, blue, grinning face of Jake. Given the power of RDA radio systems it could hardly keep up for long before collapsing but those minutes would be crucial. Finally he uploaded a worm he had fashioned, to be inserted into the surveillance satellites, neither destroying them nor jamming them but capturing them for Na'vi use. Then they could at least for a short time broadcast a message of their victory.

Judging from the position of stars and Polyphemous the clock must have been about ten PM when the radio suddenly sparked to life. "Calling airport! Calling airport! Island Gang here. Do you copy?" "Airport here. Read you loud and clear." Angie replied. Then she heard Jeff yell out: "Our message is as follows: ACTION! ACTION! ACTION! Island Gang out."

Angie thought to herself: "Now this is it!" And she called up Trudy at the Kilvan home tree: "Calling flyers. Calling flyers. Airport here! Do you copy?" Then she heard the tense voice of Trudy: "Flyers are reading you loud and clear. Your message is what?" "The message from Island Gang is: Action!" "Got it. Flyers out." And Angie now knew that in a few minutes some two hundred ikran-flyers would be airborne.

Then she switched to the channel in speaking, dialled the code and submitted it. She then switched on the jamming signal and turned on the satellite she now had taken control over – to the RDA people it looked like the satellite all of a sudden switched itself off, until it started broadcasting a message of Na'vi victory.

Searchlights, sensors and radars were blinded and directed no fire at the warriors when they were stalking the defence towers, air batteries and autocannon turrets. Both satellite and radio link communication had been blocked, so the garrison at Gargoyle Fish Land and Marakxali Island didn't get into it in time. The blocks were broken by RDA teletechies soon after but not in time to save the Sea Maggot Island base. If they had know about the full abilities of the four at the broadcasting station they might have put up barriers but they didn't know and Jake had made sure to keep them in the dark about this until now. They had never been aware of the fatal indiscretion of that radio guy at Amananga base who had noted down on paper those user IDs. Surprise is a very powerful strategy indeed and it worked to perfection.

The mercenaries fought well but against serious odds – they were alone and taken completely unaware, the Marakxali and Atoll Islanders didn't know about of events happening to their RDA allies until daybreak – they battle raged in the dark when the Na'vi eyes were superior – they had planned to fight with support from defence systems and without them everything became a chaotic mass of fighting skirmishes, and in hand-to-hand fighting the advantage of the Na'vi body was massive. The only serious resistance took place indoors in the buildings, where there was light and little place for big Na'vi bodies, but hand grenades thrown past each corner opened the way.

**Victory of OUR Truth**  
Main topics at the shows the day after was the defection of the Atoll Islander and Marakxali clans from the now defunct Ocean Federation, the fall of Sea Maggot Island base with not far from four hundred prisoners taken for the admitted loss of about fifty Na'vi warriors, the heavy mauling of the Gargoyle Fish Land base, as downloaded from hacked satellite reports. And most of all, the big victory celebration not far from Kilvan clan home tree. Maeve reported in the avatar body she actually always wore, showing festive blue people en masse. Other items in the show were interviews with two recently defected avatars, Polly West and Nino Achemiladze by name, saying that having no relatives left at Earth, with a body no longer fit to live comfortably there and a career of service among Na'vi now available there was no longer any point in working for RDA – all the more because they were most certainly loosing now. And Maeve read out to other avatars: "Now you see two agents who have jumped boat – why not you too – there is still time for it!" Yet another item was the promotions of Na'vi and former "dreamwalkers" who had earned themselves a higher ranking job, of awardings of decorations and honourable titles for bravery and great jobs.

After victory celebration it was back to everyday again. That went for the four at the broadcasting station too. Propaganda was now intensifying against Gargoyle Fish Land. The agitators and spies active there put in another gear at undermining the respect of the local clans for RDA and Neytiri got interesting stuff out of the spies and useful rumours spread out among them. The four at old Augustine reminded those at this last base about their power, from time to time they shut down the radio waves for some minutes, but the satellites were brought out of range for them, the main station at Svarog took over control over them. No more rail gun bombardment in other words, since the cannon couldn't be aimed any more. And the user identifications were, belatedly, changed. No cyber war tricks were available to Shawn now – but it no longer mattered very much.

The numbers were not on the side of RDA any longer, and when infiltrating warriors sneaked ashore they met little resistance from the pacific inclined local clans. Clan after clan turned over until they could creep in on the base itself, a sting operation unravelling the defences paved the way for the surrender. In the end there was no realistic alternative for them but to surrender.

For the benefit of viewers at Svarog and possibly other moons of Polyphemous too Maeve and Angie kept up the show unto the day of formal surrender and evacuation. But that afternoon they gave their viewers their good bye. And now they presented themselves in their currently real bodies. Angie took the word.

"We like to say good bye to our viewers, since the purpose of our broadcastings have now been fulfilled, the liberation of Pandora from meddlers from Earth. This broadcasting station is therefore now terminated. We are proud to have taken part in this work, but we are not those who have risked health and sanity, and all too often life itself, in this struggle. We have merely promoted the actions of the real heroes, to simplify their actions so that less life – human as well as na'vi – has had to be wasted. In this we have been successful and we are satisfied with this. You have seen some of us before in human shape but now behold what we really look like nowadays, all four of us in the Broadcasting Team."

Then all four of them went in front of the camera and took their farewells.

"Angela Cresson, nee Stennis, born in Reno, state of Nevada in USA. I have been the 'talking head' of this station. I like to give my permanent good bye to all I knew there, pappy and mommy for sure but sissy and my little Biffy too. I want all of you to know that I am living a happy life at Pandora now. I even think that there is something small alive in my belly now…"

"Todd Cresson, husband of Angela, from Dover, state of Delaware in USA. I have been the utility worker of these guys – quite a demanding job I tell you! I wish my parents all the best if they are still alive, certainly sisters Denise and Antonia and also my little brother Rollo. And not to forget my wish goes to the parrot I gave Rollo when I left from home, all the best Squeaky! Know that this is my life now, a life I have freely chosen for myself – and only now I got to know that I am going to be blessed with some offspring!"

"Maeve O'Leary, nee MacSweeney, coming from city of Sligo in county named likewise, in the Republic of Ireland. I have been the journalist and editor of this station. I was a lone child from parents who died shortly before I embarked on my voyage here, so I just like to relay my thanks to my alma mater Trinity University in Dublin, for educating me in many matters highly useful to me to this day – in my effort for the freedom of this world. Good bye and God bless Ireland!"

"And I am Shawn O'Leary, husband of Maeve, coming from a village in county Donegal. I have been the programmer, sound techie and 'electronic wizard' of the station. I am from a large family and I like to declare my greeting to them in the language I spoke during my first years alive. (He broke into some rambling talking in Irish Gaelic.) And for the rest of you, freedom is something Irishmen are always fond of fighting for, you can regard me and my Maeve as a new issue of many Irish 'wild geese'. Go Ireland!"

And they all said "good bye" a capella, and the screen went blank.

But Shawn was given one propaganda task more to take care of. Neytiri appointed him and Naraporn Sarasinithat to present their testimony at the broadcasting station at Svarog, with its ability to send messages through the wormhole to Earth with a time delay counted in hours not years.

Then the two propaganda agents went each their own way, Shawn back to Pandora to team up with Maeve again, oh so he longed to bring in MacGregor and play up a lively reel again! While Sarasinithat went to Earth to bear witness in court for the trials of the people guilty in this nightmare that had been taking place at Pandora.


	8. The Sleeping Agent

The Sleeping Agent Acceptance of the Surrender Terms

People at the RDA head base at the moon of Svarog had expected the news, they had followed the fighting at Gargoyle Fish Land from spy satellites and they had read the reports of colonel Cardoso Avellano, but it came as a shock all the same. The last base at Pandora had been forced to negotiate for surrender. That Cardoso Avellano had done his utmost as a military man was well understood, he was not to blame. After the fall of the base at Sea Maggot Island all omens had been pointing this way.

Head of security at Svarog, captain Bettina Cox had developed an innate hatred towards the na'vi after her husband, brigadier Neville Cox, had fallen in the battle for Sea Maggot Island. But she had no choice but to take the surrender terms to the head of the colony, Perry Henson.

"Evacuating the base at Gargoylefish Land and all of Pandora – I bet they want that. Bringing up the POWs – all right, we know well where the prisoner camp is, we have supplied them with food fit for humans and spare exopacks…"

Miss Cox broke in: "Knowing fully well where it is, why hasn't Cardoso Avellano tried an attack at the camp to liberate the prisoners?"

Henson stared incongruously at her: "A little imagination please, you do realize what would have happened then? When the attackers would have been stalking the camp they could very well have been set upon by guardian warriors in the thick jungle, and if they after all had managed to penetrate the camp it would probably been full of killed prisoners. Well all right, resuming. They want us to call our avatar agents to the camp too, on pain of executing them. And finally they want to send a message to Earth detailing the disaster that has been."

"Perry, we can't allow them that, such a publicity defeat will very likely destroy the RDA company! Remember where our salaries are coming from!"

"Seriously Bettina! The lives of our men and women down there is at stake! We don't have much of a choice if we don't want our men and women at arms to be slaughtered like hogs."

Cox was more grumpy than ever, and she had started to ponder how she could avenge herself at the na'vi.

Henson was certainly not in doubt about which council he was to give Cardoso Avellano: Surrender. Or which message he was about to issue to the undercover agents around at Pandora: At once go to the POW camp.

Message Read out to the Agents

The agents around at Pandora had two daily points of time when they could listen to news from Svarog and deliver their intelligence messages, twelve hours apart so that it could be listened to in the waking time all around the moon. The same message was read out aloud at both points of time: All RDA agents were ordered to report to the ranking officer at the camp, captain Mortimer Royce, at once. They would then in time be taken up to Svarog and then back to Earth if they chose. Disobeying this order meant that the RDA company couldn't take any responsibility for their security. Name lists of their assumed identities and their locations had been submitted to the Na'vi, so they could be tracked down in so case.

Ninetynine RDA agents had been deployed at Pandora. Of them, eleven had defected before the war had turned decidedly against the company, and they had rendered good service for the na'vi – the most prominent of them was agent Sarasinithat, fourteen more had been revealed and were sitting twiddling their thumbs in the prisoner camp, nineteen had tried to evade capture after their discovery and had gone down fighting, fiftyfive were left around the moon. Those who had managed to evade capture were mostly in ignorance about the real situation, they had understood so much out of the news from Svarog and the chitchat they listened to among the na'vi they associated with every day that the war wasn't going too well but to most of them the surrender still was a profound shock.

Two of the unknown avatars were Olesya Sachurina and her partner Bela Kifenyök, known as Tätitsu and Maumuzu of the U'o'ne clan, unusual for being two in one clan.

"This is it, partner. This is the end. We must at once go to the prisoner camp. The na'vi will be on to us. I have no intention of allowing those claws to dig into my shoulder so I shall now go there instantly, it will be a serious shock to olo'eyktan Wo'ätar but I am sure he will take me with his ikran to the prisoner camp rather than having us killed."

"You may be, I for my part can see no reason to return to Earth. I have been permanently transferred to this avatar body and I have no relations there any more. Food will not be up to my tongue now, air is most probably unhealthy to me, water will hardly be potable – I am going to try my luck at staying put."

"Wish you the best of luck then, and that they are not too brutal with you when they come to get you."

And then there was a more sinister kind, Gertrud Heldenhof was one of them. She went by the na'vi name Enu'not of the Rock in the Sea clan, out in the sea west of Namana Land. Back at Earth she had seen her father waste away with a cancer brought on him by unhealthy working conditions and abetted to no small degree by the generally polluted environment, those working conditions that would have been avoided if sufficient unobtanium had been available to move dangerous operations out into space, that would have been beneficial to the environment too. So she had sworn an oath on his dead body to get sufficient of that mineral to put such factories up into the interplanetary space, and on the whole improving the lot of humanity. She didn't want a grief so avoidable to fall on anyone else! She was not to be daunted by something she imagined as a temporary setback to the RDA company. They would certainly be back before long! Until then she intended to stay incognito, deliver her weekly reports and until RDA company was back she would keep making herself useful to the clan, thus staying alive to keep on reporting.

She heard the command to go to the camp and ignored it, when she next gave report she got a reply and its content made her an icy feeling tingle in her back. "Agent Heldenhof, you have one week left before last takeoff. If you by then are back at Pandora still, there is no way of saying what will be then en for you, it might well be a slow and painful death executed by vengeant na'vi who have lost relatives. You should really get going back to the camp! This is DEADLY serious! Literally spoken! Also for you to know, we have got message through the wormhole that the RDA company at Earth has applied for protection under bankruptcy laws after this disaster! UN has announced that it is taking over the whole running of the mining stations here at Alpha Centauri. So your reports are no longer wanted nor will they be received and read."

It dawned to Gertrud that this really _was_ serious. RDA out of business? No need at Svarog for her reports? But her contact officer had told her that there would be years before any significant amount of unobtanium could be consigned from those moons up there. She decided to hang on until someone came down to take over after RDA, so she sent one last message up to Svarog: "Agent Heldenhof will now go to sleep. No more reports. Can be activated by activating message agreed upon, delivered through this channel, at the date of descent down to Pandora. Will monitor radio recording unit for messages once a month. Waiting for someone to come back down to Pandora, to restart mining for some years in the future. Goodbye."

Last Batch of POWs Consigned to Svarog

A week later Jake, Norm and Neytiri stood and saw the ramp closing as the last POWs left the camp. The agents were the last to depart since they were in avatar bodies and had no need for exopacks. Tomorrow was the day of formal surrender and the space shuttle would come down to take up the garrison at Gargoyle Fish Land.

"Give me a status of the camp now, Norm" Jake said.

Norm detailed: "493 prisoners of war have departed sound and hale, 9 dead for natural causes while in custody, 2 gone missing from the camp and presumed dead. 99 secret and diplomatic agents originally active, 11 of them have taken our side, 14 were captured during the war and left from the camp just now, together with the POWs that is, 17 of them are known to be dead with 2 more presumed to be dead, leaving us with 55 active agents at the time of surrender. Of those 46 arrived by their own and 2 more were revealed and brought here forcibly. Leaving us with 7 still unaccounted for."

"It is good" said Neytiri.

Norm asked: "Have you heard some interwievs with those two they had to wrangle to get here?"

She replied: "I have and they were simply trying to get themselves disappeared into their clans, making a reasonable life for so long. May be for ever more or may be until some new mining company was coming back, hard to say."

Jake pointed out: "Those seven left in hiding might be some menace. We should at least try to reveal and capture them. Do you have their personal data, Norm?"

"Yes I do have them, they are as follows. Dennis Drygalski alias Zewyti, at Ka'zostots clan at Nongona Land. Milly Pevensie alias Lalafatu, at Bebeho clan at Northern Land. David Bellamy alias Kohol'e, at Noto'p clan west of Nongona. Gertrud Heldenhof alias Enu'not, at the Rock in the Sea clan in the Western Sea federation. Olesya Sachurina alias Tätitsu, of the U'o'ne clan, Javad Qari Karimpor alias Babaf'te, at the Ruru clan also at Nongona Land, finally Moshe Ben Rafat of the Nozo'omo clan of the Metelai federation also west of Nongona."

"Very well, we'll see if we can track them down then."

Going Traitor - Hunting

The huge jump in the number of prisoners of war had taken place when the Sea Maggot Island base had fallen. What had been some hundred and twenty POWs before was all of a sudden more than five hundred. It had become too inconvenient to keep them in small groups in the custody of every other clan, they were transported to a POW camp set up in the Kilvan clan's territory. The warriors of the clan were detailed to guard them and Trudy, who had recently been promoted to olo'kumpongu eyktan (i.e. the military rank equal to army captain) was put at their head to guard them and serve their needs. She had established regular contact with officials at Svarog and had cared for them with human digestible food delivered them from Svarog, supplementing what still was grown at the by now mostly dilapidated greenhouses at Augustine, and with exopacks when those they had taken hold on when bases had been taken plus those still left from Augustine. And she had drilled her warriors to soldier status, so that her olo'kumpongu formed a contingent at the surrender ceremony. The clan hunters took on the job those days.

Now that the POWs were gone she was tasked with the apprehension of those seven hideaways. She took to the air with her kumpongu and tracked them down. Some of them were simple to take. Karimpor made no attempt at hiding or escaping, he simply said when they came to take him: "I have been waiting for you. Perform your duty swiftly, please." Trudy replied: "We are not going to execute you, you have not done any very serious damage to us yet. You will live, here at Pandora, we'll put you holdouts in the custody of inland clans where it will be hard to get away by sea. Your communication devices will of course be taken away from you. In your clan you will be a lone avatar, to keep you from concocting ominous plans. You will be living in a clan with no significant deposits of unobtanium in the vicinity, i.e. a clan not likely to be close to likely landing zones for any new colonization attempt. Finally, you will be branded with an ignoble tattoo, for ever declaring you a pariah to be looked after, and in the case of yet another invasion – promptly executed. Further than that, you will live to the end of your days, as happily as your circumstances will allow you.

Karimpor looked dejected but accepted his fate.

Ben Rafat likewise accepted his fate readily if unhappily when they came for him. Pevensie tried to run for it when they came for her but she was taken without much ado. Sachurina had tried to flee in time to a neighbouring inland clan but she didn't make much fuss when they finally had her surrounded. Drygalski likewise tried to flee to another clan beforehand, he however tried to resist arrest and had to be forcibly subdued, it was really a rough shuffle. Bellamy simply said: "I'm sorry, I just tried to do what I regarded as my sworn duty" and swallowed a fast acting poison when they faced him, committing suicide before they could explain for him that his life was not what they were coming to take. Only Heldenhofer was left.

When they came for her she had however vanished. The Rock in the Sea olo'eyktan said that he had heard a fisher say that he had seen her paddling away due west, with a big oil skin sack in the boat. "Big, water tight sack in the boat, meaning that it is carrying something sensitive to moisture – it is possible that she is up to no good" Trudy commented to her srung olo'kumpongu eyktan Wau'wau then. Actually by then something more than just her sidekick – they had mated only some days before…

The Fugitive

Heldenhofer beached her canoe in the late evening and put it to fire, she ate the food she had brought along while it burned and then she dug down in the sand at the beach the ashes left of the canoe. She then quickly went inland at Nongona Land. She scanned the maps she had memorized and decided that not far inland was the Tunteye clan, just over the river, over that hill and down into the valley on the other side. But that was a march for tomorrow. She better take cover and have a nap for tomorrow, she climbed up into an uninhabited kelutrel–tree, found a comfortable hollow and fell asleep.

In the morning she lugged the big sack with her radio set up to the mountain ridge and looked for somewhere to hide it out of sight. The radio was very economical with electricity, but still it paid to put it where reception would be best, to make the power last for as long as possible. She found an empty kelutrel-tree and put it into a hole there, and hid the hole with a piece of bark. Having taken well care of this, she walked down to the location of the Tunteye clan hometree.

Entering the hometree she asked for the olo'eyktan. A hunter answered: "He is away to the Tree of Souls at Namana Land, to draft the outline together with Jakesully for a new order of politics of the world of ours. He will probably be back in a week or so. But you could have a talk with our tsahik."

Heldenhofer walked around looking for some woman with some telltale insignia, probably that red checkered cape. While on the outlook she worked mentally with a last minute rehearsal of the bogus personal history she had invented for herself.

Finally she stood facing a youngish (and therefore naïve, she hoped) woman with a big, tasselled headband. "Most honoured tsahik, I am Kawatx te Papaba from the island so named out east. After seriously falling out with my olo'eytkan I hereby apply for residence rights."

"You can be granted such a right but to become one of the clan you will have to go for a dream hunt, the way we perform it. And you will of course need an ikran of your own, I can see that you come to us without it."

"Yes, I am a warrior by profession – yes you can say that this is uncommon for a woman like I am but so is the case – but I have not got my own ikran instead of the one I lost when I took part in a skirmish in the war against the tawtute."

It lasted two weeks before olo'eytkan Bobot'wu returned. He was a man in advanced years, obviously the father of tsahik Paling'ri. He brought news that the Tunteye clan now as a member of the East Coast tribe at Nongona Land Federation, he was in a few days to go for a constituting meeting with the other clans of the tribe to appoint a leadership for the tribe. Until then he would be busy with clan appointments, the craft masters were in place already but they now received a formal status new to them, likewise the mate of Paling'ri was given a permanent title as srung olo'eytkan. And when leaving for the tribal constituting assembly he would bring along a clan member to be the representative of the clan in that tribal governing assembly, this person was to be named too. Finally, one of the days some warriors from Namana Land would soon be arriving to teach efficient ways of fighting tawtute, should they reappear.

Heldenhofer thought to herself: "Jake Sully is at work with erecting a wall around Pandora."

Time started to pass. Warrior "Kawatx", alias Gertrud Heldenhofer that is, went through her dream hunt – her spirit guide showed to be an angtsik. She found herself an ikran and named him Tsamshiu'gro, translating as "Masked Warrior". She took on her daily routine as a warrior of the clan, in competitions she excelled and was one day offered the rank as siltsan tsamshiu (i.e. "good warrior", equal to sergeant). She from time to time checked her radio set, it never showed any sign of received message. She understood that it would take time – long time – before a new human settlement was to be attempted. So she settled for the long haul. She experienced some romantic advances but rejected them out of hand – she knew what would happen if the tsahaylu connection was made… Cover blown! Apprehension! Uncertain but certainly uncomfortable fate!

(Wo)Manhunt

Then something new took place at Namana Land, six years after the surrender at Gargoyle Fish Land. A murderer was arrested, tried and convicted, and as a smart crook only revealed after some not too incompetent criminal investigation, it was decided to establish a permanent force dedicated to finding and catching other smart criminals too. Some scouts took on training for it and after two years a semblance of a Namana Land police force was on foot. It soon proved its worth with bringing to the Mountain clan two Omatikaya game poachers for trial, and very soon other federations decided to get their own "police agencies" too.

Beyla, the thief catching eytkan of the Namana Land federation, decided to give the Nongona Land thief catching force a testing exercise. Trudy, tsamshiu eytkan of the Kilvan clan, had said that she thought that there was a human spy "asleep" somewhere in the Nongona Land, she had gone looking for this "Enu'not" but never found her. But now that there was a thief catcher in every Nongona clan it could be an idea to use this network to catch her. A formal request for extradition was given the Nongona federation council, detailing her looks and what she was under suspicion for.

"Kawatx" had by now earned a strong reputation as an outstanding warrior, a good role model for the girls of the clan that female warriors were well possible if they had the body strength and mental power it took. At Earth she had learned some taekwondo, a martial art well known for its footwork, it became her trade mark and she taught other warriors some kicks originally invented in Korea at Earth – but that she of course didn't say... She made her mark when she took part in a punitive expedition sanctioned by the Nongona Land federation council against a clan refusing to hand over a serially kidnapping sadistic clan member revealed by the thief catching agency. She then behaved with due military discipline, leading her detailed squad in the shootout which made the clan realize that they had no choice but to give up their protection of the hoodlum. Olo'eytkan Bobot'wy afterwards dropped her some hints that he was thinking about recommending her for a place at the war school of the tribe.

The Tunteye clan thief catcher Wuz sought out olo'eytkan Bobot'wu and presented him the search warrant he had received from his thief catching eytkan: "Wanted: Ngertrutx Heltxenhofer. Reason for this search warrant: She is a human secret agent looking perfectly like a na'vi, alias Enu'not and now most probably under some else alias. Description: Athletic female, likely passing as a hunter or warrior, or scout may be. Spindly spot pattern in the face, radiating out from the nose and eye area like rays from the sun. Has formerly had an affectation for green stripes in loincloth and war paint. Feisty and independent type, given that she is living with a sinister secret she is not likely to have taken a mate. She very probably has a radio set hidden somewhere close to the clan she is living in. Risks: She is a good fighter, with an excellent archery eye and a nasty kicking foot, her fistfighting is somewhat weaker but not to be ignored either. By nature she is a free and dauntless spirit, she is patient and thinking far ahead, and she is well versed in the jungle and sea skills of Pandora. When she is surrounded she is likely to put up a stiff fight and she has evaded capture before, so make sure that she is swiftly set upon by a well prepared and numerous kumpongu when she is to be arrested."

This message was read out aloud to olo'eytkan Bobot'wy, tsahik Paling'ri and tsamshiu eytkan Tatawä. A thoughtful expression came over the face of Tatawä. "A single female warrior with face spots radiating from her eyes and nose, who is good with the bow and with a close-in fighting style very often using kicks – this sounds very much like Kawatx! We better report to thief catching eytkan and to the federation council, and soon."

Reports immediately went to the Namana Land federation and Trudy got to hear about it. She gave an advice: "You can ask them to verify their hunch by searching through the forest around the hometree. Hilltops and the like are good places to look, that is where a radio working on very weak power is best placed. Tell to send us message if they find a rather large metal box with handles, small holes with hard water (i.e. gauges and instruments with glass windows) and a big handle (for turning to recharge the battery). That will be a telltale sign that this agent is in their clan."

Some gatherers joined the warriors and hunters in their search through the forest, and the hilltops around were combed meticulously. And it was a gatherer who discovered that high up in an uninhabited kelutrel-tree on a hilltop there was a place where the bark was hanging loose. Turning the bark aside a metal box fitting the description was found. Eureka! Wuz brought the news to his superiors and it passed on to the Namana thief catching people. So Wuz was given an order he transmitted to Bobot'wy: "Arrest Kawatx and bring her to the Nongona Federation council. She will be given the same treatment as the others are already serving under."

"I hesitate with complying with that demand." Bobot'wy said. "She has shown herself to be a brave warrior who has served her clan well. I think I will rather go by another way."

The Oath

Heldenhofer was sitting making arrows when suddenly the whole kumpongu surrounded her. Panic at once struck her like a hammer blow. Then all of a sudden olo'eytkan Bobot'wy stood there with Paling'ri close by, both of them in their most formal attire. "Kaltxi (hello), Ngertrutx, or is it Enu'not or may be Kawatx? We have found your talking machine and taken it away, it has been studied by knowledgable people from Namana Land. They found out that there has never been any contact from the Sky since a few days after the tawtute were sent away, that is calming to us. But you have been hiding with us, hoping that they should one day come back. We can't tolerate such a secret person among us, I can tell you right away what has come to the six other agents they found. They were not killed but exiled one by one to inlander clans with few grey rocks nearby, they were branded with an ignominous tattoo to mark them as people to be executed as soon as tawtute reappear.

Perhaps we should do likewise to you… or not… because you have so far been a faithful warrior of our clan, doing useful warrior work. I am inclined to let you live with us, in violation of what the federation council is saying, but it will take something of you. You must give us your to the core earnest pledge of loyality, that you are our Kawatx henceforth and never again will consider yourself a dreamwalker in human service. You will even be able to take a mate now like ever so many honest females! Paling'ri here will make a tsahaylu link to verify if your oath then is honest and pure. Otherwise you will end up in the same situation as them. Well Ngertrutx or Kawatx or whatever, are you ready to swear this oath? Down on your knees, put your hand on the hemline of her cape and swear, if you accept this! I will ask and you give the most solemn reply you can think of. If I am dissatisfied with an answer I will ask you again."

Everyone around could see that a titanic but wordless struggle raged in the mind of the warrior woman – her face was painfully contorted. For a people where nobody wore wristwatches it was hard to say precisely how long she stood there numbed, ten or fifteen minutes may be, but finally she fell to her knees and pinched the tsahik's robe. A dialogue ensued:

"Who are you presently?" "I am Gertrud Heldenhofer, daughter of Ralf and Nelly Heldenhofer, I was born in the clan of Fulda, tribe of Anhalt – Sachsen, federation of Germany at Earth. And I have been a secret propaganda agent for the RDA's PR office "

"Who are you forever hereafter?" "I am Kawatx te Fultxa Nell'ite, living in the Tunteye clan belonging to the East Coast tribe of the Nongona federation at Pandora. Or wherever my duties as a warrior of any rank I am promoted to in the service of the Nongona federation may take me."

"Which is the loyality you hereby lay off?" "I give up any ritual, formal or obliging link with Earth and the representatives from Earth here in this stellar system, of any state or corporation."

"You should add that your oath today will renounce any oath you have previously sworn, however sacred." "My oath soon given will override any oath formerly sworn by me, under however solemn circumstances, as it is concerned with a higher moral duty."

"Which is the loyality you hereby pledge?" "I undertake always to defend this world, this federation, this tribe, this clan and may be in the future my own family if needed be. Should it take giving up my life to uphold this oath then so be it."

Bobot'wy brandished his knife. "What is this?" "It is the knife that will run through my jugular if I betray my oath."

He took his daughter Paling'ri by her shoulder. "Who are we?" "You are the two principal witnesses to my oath, Bobot'wy the olo'eytkan and Paling'ri the tsahik of this clan."

"In whose name do you give your oath?" "I give my oath in the gaze of Eywa herself and in the name of the almighty and divine Christian trinity, who I believe with all my faith are two ways of regarding the same deity."

"All right, this stands to reason. So you do swear this oath you have given?" "May the ground instantly open up below my feet if I ever betray this word: Yes."

"Congratulations Kawatx! Paling'ri will now check if this oath has been given with a clean heart."

Immediately after the tsahaylu connection was made. Kawatx' eyes were downcast and she soon started to shiver. Finally Paling'ri broke the link.

"She has spoken her earnest truth, she wholeheartedly meant what she said. Congratulations from me too, Kawatx!"

A Wise Man Discovered

Kawatx was taken to the Nongona federation council and displayed as a case of a new na'vi of by now undisputable loyality. Bobot'wy defended her with forceful elocution, he even challenged any tsahik with making a tsahaylu to check her sincerity for herself – none did. An olo'kumpongu eyktan by now mostly called Trutxyts'akon stood at the sideline and saw this, she afterwards had a talk with Bobot'wy: "Perhaps this might be possible for the five other former spies still alive too. They'll be given the option to go for it or not like Heldenhofer did. May be six years of humiliating servitude have softened their resolve to stay loyal with Earth, who knows? Or they can go up to the Svarog moon when and if Naraporn is returning to us, if they feel like."

The offer to swear a big oath of loyality, verified by a tsahaylu connection, with the threat of death on the either hand for betraying it and the promise of a happier life on the other hand, was presented to those five former spies. They all accepted it, more or less grudgingly. There were also some na'vi who were less than happy with accepting this decision, Neytiri for one, but most could ultimately be convinced that it was for the best in the end.

In the end it all played out in its happiest way. Bobot'wy rose in the esteem of many for his wisdom and his way of finding a creative solution to some unhappy destinies. He subsequently rose to nxi'eyktan, i.e. tribe chieftain, for his last years before his retirement. The clans could enrol six proud and strong fighters, five former spies were declared as having served their punishments and were eminently trustable for ever more. They all created their own families after their inductions, Kawatx and her mate soon had a son and a daughter of their own.

When some years later Sarasinithat came back from Earth, having taken part in seeing to that the top people of the late RDA company had been given their due punishments, the same offer of settling with some Na'vi clan was most graciously extended to other permanent avatars, provided that they swore the same big oath. Three of the sixty that had gone up to Svarog had gone to their ancestors in the meantime, the other fiftyseven accepted the offer and settled at Pandora. They proudly swore off any loyality towards Earth and all there was to it and were settled at clans that still were recuperating from the long war now quite a few years past.


End file.
